Perhaps at no time in my life have I felt a greater burden of responsibility on my shoulders than I do today.  This is because I have never before persuaded so many brothers from so many lands to leave their homes and travel across the seas in the name of Islam.  And never before have so many brothers responded positively to such a call in so short a time.  In my letters to you I have given an outline of the reasons for asking you to come to this least holy of places.  I am sure you have undertaken this journey in the true sprit of undertaking a journey in the way of Allah. It is customary for a host to welcome his guests.

But before I say a formal word of welcome to you, allow me first to introduce the hosts to the guests.  Your host in London is nominally the Muslim Institute for Research and Planning, its Founder Members who live in all parts of the world, its small staff, and a handful of students.  But in fact your host today is the worldwide Islamic movement itself, a movement of which hosts and guests alike are vital parts.  Thus all of us together, whether we have traveled from distant lands across the seas or from a London suburb, are guests and hosts at one and the same time.  Each of us is a host as well as a guest no Muslim is a stranger to another Muslim.  For Muslims, geographical location has always been an accident of circumstance and never an end it itself.  Every place is home to a Muslim.  Islam is universal, and Muslims are free of all inhibitions of locality, territoriality and nationality.

The fact that we are only a handful in this room this morning need not worry us very much.  It appears to me that every particle in Allah's creation represents the whole.  The Islamic movement represents that part of Allah's creation that is mobilized by Islam and Muslims alone have the historical responsibility and right to do so, to establish good and eradicate evil.  In my submission, the relative size of the parts committed to good and evil is not important.

The point I am making here is well illustrated by the history that was made in the Hijaz just 1400 years ago.  I refer, of course, to the drama of Revelation and Prophethood and the accompanying struggle between those who accepted revealed truth and those who did not.  The course of that struggle, the processes of Revelation and the role of the Prophet, upon whom be peace, are recorded in great detail and are known to all Muslims.  I only whish to draw your attention to one particular aspect of that episode when Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, was completing the message of truth to mankind as a message as well as a living, functioning, reality.

The point I want to make emerges from the scale of the events in the Hijaz and the geographical location itself.  The area and arena were at that time a remote, inhospitable and inaccessible part of the world.  The number of people living there was very small indeed, even by the standards of those days.  The population of Makkah was probably no more than a few thousand, the population of Madinah even smaller.  There were few other towns or permanent settlements of any size.  In the wilderness of the desert was scattered a nomadic, tribal population.  They were a fighting, feuding, warring people immersed in jahiliyyah, a form of primitive savagery and ignorance recorded by historians in some detail.  Immediately to the north, northeast and northwest of this arid wilderness there were vast areas of fertile valleys, large populations and centres of highly developed civilizations and cultures.  If this scientific methods of today could have gone out looking for an area where God's truth would be completed for all time to come, they might have chosen some part of the Mediterranean Basin, Mesopotamia or Persia.  Further to the east, India and China also had populations that would be considered ‘statistically relevant' for the embodiment of the coming truth.  But in His supreme divine wisdom Allah ta'ala chose the locale of the Hijaz.

The entire process of Revelation and Prophethood and its inevitable clash with the existing order of the time took place over a very small area and involved a relatively small number of people.  During the first thirteen years, in Makkah, the message was accepted by only about three hundred souls.  At the end, after 23 years, the number of Muslims has increased to about 100,000, most of whom had joined the faith during the last two or three years.  Having delivered the message and completed its embodiment on the smallest of historical scales in a remote place, Allah ta'ala launched it as the message of truth for all mankind and for all time.  The message of Islam so transformed the people affected by it that they emerged on the stage of the world as Muslims, and went on to establish the greatest civilization in history.

In this there is a clear lesson for us. It is simply that truth, once it is accepted by the smallest number of people and established even on the smallest scale, is capable of defeating evil, the centres and powers of evil, the culture and ‘civilization' of evil, or the States that embody evil.  It have been my belief for a number of years that a global Islamic movement has always existed, that, despite the obvious fragmentation of the Ummah at many levels, there still exists a solid unity awaiting to assert itself.

The wahadah of the Ummah, however, cannot be an abstract value; if it has any meaning and modern relevance it must tackle the fundamental problem of eliminating (one by one or in any other order) all the sources of division that now divide us.  This must also mean that, as the sources of division and fragmentation are eliminated, they should be replaced by new and powerful institutional arrangements.  This highest institution known in Islam is of course the Islamic State.  It follows, therefore, that the Islamic movement must establish a number of new Islamic States and eliminate a number of States that exist today.  What this means is that the Ummah, acting through the Islamic movement, must redraw the map of the world of Islam, if indeed not the map of the whole world.

I have felt for a number of years that at the present time the Muslims have too many States, the nation-States that emerged from the colonial belly of western imperialism.  These States are largely the creation of the colonial powers.  Their boundaries and frontiers and their political, social and economic systems serve the goals of global imperialism. The ruling classes that control these States are little more than instruments of a new and more insidious form of colonialism and exploitation from within.  Nearly all these nation-States must be abolished.  The Islamic movement must commit itself to the abolition of the present generation of nation-States that divides the Ummah in the fashion of a jigsaw puzzle.  With these nation-States must also go their ruling classes, their armies, bureaucracies, administrative systems, as well as their social and economic systems and the alien values and lifestyles they represent.

The Ummah perhaps needs no more than four or five Islamic States.  One in the Far East, taking in modern Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and parts of the Philippines.  A second Islamic State would take in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula.  The Muslim areas now colonized by the Soviet Union would join this Islamic State as and when they are liberated.  A third Islamic State could take in Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, and the States of the northern African coast up to and including Morocco.  A fourth Islamic State would include Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Mauritania and the little ‘republics' that are strewn along the western ad southern coast of West Africa from Senegal to Gabon. This at present is a highly speculative stretch of the imagination.  It does not take into account such other areas as, for instance, Tanzania and Mozambique. There are undoubtedly many other anomalies.  Yet the Islamic movement has no choice in the matter.  If the ummah is to overcome its present lethargy it has to be presented with a bold and imaginative alternative.  I am convinced that the goals of the Islamic movement will have to be defined in some such framework for the future political expression of the Ummah's Divine unity and purpose.

Looking ahead, far beyond the immediate present and perhaps also the immediate future, is the surest way of lifting the gloom and depression imposed by the ‘reality' that surrounds us.  This is precisely the technique of Revelation and Prophethood.  I am reminded of the occasion when, still in Makkah and surrounded and almost overwhelmed by his enemies, the Prophet, upon whom be peace, predicted the fall of Byzantium and Persia to Islam.  When his uncle, Abu Talib, approached the Prophet with a proposal for a ‘Just peace' with the Quraish, the Prophet replied that it would be most ‘just' for Quraish to accept Allah's message, and ultimately it would bring to them, the Muslims, the empire of Persia.  This was, let it be noted at a time when the followers of Islam numbered no more than a few dozen and most of them had taken refuge in Abyssinia. Today the Islamic movement, with a ‘constituency' of one thousand million Muslims spread over all parts of the world, can, following the Sunnah of the Prophet, justifiably speculate upon the future map of the world of Islam. The future we desire must be firmly based on our past. Especially in the Sunnah of the Prophet, in the memory and example of the State of Madinah, and in the imagination of versatile and dynamic Islamic movement that sets out to seek only the pleasure of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala.


It follows form this that today's Islamic movement must establish a direct and uninterrupted link with the roots and continuing history of Islam.  In recent years I have repeatedly argued that the present generation of institutions, governmental and private, that has acquired dominance in Muslim societies represents a clean break in our historical experience.  Admittedly, before the colonial period set in, the political, social and economic institutions of Muslim society has been on a curse of progressive deviation form the norms established by the Prophet, upon whom be peace, and by the early caliphs and Imams. Nevertheless, before the colonialists began their work of plunder, demolition and destruction it was possible to trace the origins of out institutions, including the States, back to our inheritance from the Prophet of Islam.  The origins of the States and institutions we have today can only be traced as far back as the colonial experience and the culture and system of exploitation, corruption, brutality, inequality and depravity that the colonialists let loose upon us in the name of progress and modernization.  Today, our societies overflow with western filth and squalor, and our people have, throughout decades of defeat and failure, lost their poise and confidence in their own ability to reverse this drift to destruction.

Among us there are even some who have lost hope in the future.  Many have also come to regard our present condition as permanent, especially in relation to the western civilization and the economic, scientific and technological achievements of the west.

Almost the first task of the Islamic movement, therefore, is to restore confidence and poise to the Ummah.  This can only be achieved if the Islamic movement adopts an imaginative programme. The twin pillars of which must be a total commitment to the creation of Islamic States over all areas at present lying in Muslim nation-States' control or under colonial rule, and an equally firm commitment to the rejection, abolition and expulsion of all western influence from our societies.  Perhaps these two commitments are essentially the same; neither can be made without the other.

This still leaves unresolved the question of establishing a direct and uninterrupted link with our past beyond the colonial period.  The link we seek must be institutional and common to every Muslim, a value and practice that has remained universally effective and participatory throughout these 1400 years.  The annual assemblage of Muslims, from all parts of the world in Makkah for the Hajj, undoubtedly is that institutional arrangement Divinely provided by Allah, sunhanahu wa ta'ala.  The Hajj links us not only with Muhammad, but also with the Prophets Ibrahim and Isma'il, upon all of whom be peace.  The Hajj spans nearly 4000 years and represents the ultimate commitment of the Ummah to its unity and to its recovery from decline and deviation.  We need to remind ourselves that the Hajj continued to be performed even during the jahiliyyah, the primitive ignorance and savagery that prevailed in Makkah itself.  It was against this backdrop of jahiliyyah in the geographical centre of the faith that Allah chose to send his final Prophet and to reveal and complete His message to mankind.

Those of us who have been to Makkah in recent years will testify to the fact that the city is once again in the grip of a form of jahiliyyah.  This is the neo-jahiliyyah of secular values, secular institutions, secular political authority, moral corruption, greed and avarice.  Nor are Makkah and the Hajj immune form the political chicanery of the 40 or so nation-States that keep the Ummah divided, defeated and humiliated at the present time.  In January 1981, the heads of State of these 40 symbols of our subservience to imperialism met together in Makkah and staged a contrived show of their alleged piety. No voice was heard against this misuse of the Haram for the staging of a political shown designed primarily to mislead the Ummah about the satanic nature of the rulers and regimes who met there, or of the host regime itself.  This so-called Islamic Summit' was convened there precisely in order to deflect the attention of the Ummah from the fact that Makkah and the Hajj are the true centres and focal pints of Islam and of the Islamic Movement alone. The nation-States that are not fortunate enough to have Makkah and Madinah located in their territories try to make up for it by sending highly publicized ‘delegations' to perform an official Hajj in the company of Their Majesties and Royal Highnesses.

The Hajj is a great leveler of the distinctions of wealth, position and power.  But in today's neo-jahiliyyah the wealthy and the powerful maintain their distinction even during the Hajj.  The mode of transport, the diversity of accommodation based on commercialism, and even the quality of the cloth used for ihram, all go to make for the accentuation of these distinctions. This obscenity reaches its peak around the Ka'aba itself when one of the heads of State performs the tawaf.  The Ka'aba suffers the indignity of being surrounded by uniformed soldiers carrying arms and wearing boots.  An area around the Ka'aba is cleared to allow the rulers of these nation-States ‘protection', presumably from their own people, in the House of Allah!

The procedure and ritual of the Hajj are so arranged at the present time that the hujjaj return none the wiser about the true state of the Ummah.  Nearly two million Muslims gather together in Makkah for the Hajj every year.  It is a measure of the success of our ruling classes that this great annual assembly of the Muslims poses no threat to he existing order in the Arabian Peninsula or in the world outside.  The meaning and manifestation of the Hajj are totally missing from the manner in which two million Muslims perform the ritual year after year.  At a time in history when the whole of Palestine, including Jerusalem, is occupied by Israel, the Hajj comes and goes without any effort made to transform it into an instrument for the motivation and the mobilization of the Ummah to confront its enemies.

If a room in my house was occupied by thugs and thieves, would it be possible for my family to meet in a neighboring room and disperse without discussing the occupation, its implications and the steps necessary to throw out the intruders?  Would it be possible for me to entertain my family in such a way that no member of the family raised the question of the occupation of the family home?  Would it be possible for me to ignore my family and establish cordial relations with the very people who had occupied part of my house and killed and raped members of my household?  If I did so, what should my family do with me?  I need hardly answer these questions.  The Islamic movement today is in precisely this situation; the Islamic movement is a family that has been robbed of a central part of its inheritance, and those who control the rest do not want their enjoyment of these resources marred by a struggle to regain what is lost.  Not one of the 40 nation-States wants to liberate al-Quds.  An essential part of their strategy to remain in control and allow the family to meet and disperse without discussion of the central issues is to insist that the Hajj is no more than an annual ritual of ‘worship' without any implications for the state of the Ummah.

This situation is quite unacceptable to the Ummah.  Exactly what the Islamic movement would do about it is a question that must be answered soon.  What is quite clear is that the present state of affairs must be brought to an end as speedily as possible.  The Ummah cannot begin to function again as a global goal-seeking community of the Faithful, in control of its own destiny and that of mankind, until such time as its central institutional structures are restored to full health.

The paramount institution of all is of course the Islamic State.  We must never lose sight of the fact that the Last Prophet, Muhammad created the first Islamic State in history, upon whom be peace.  Indeed, the first Islamic State emerged as part of the struggle that accompanied the completion of Revelation and Prophethood.

The message in the Qur'an was interwoven in the struggle of the Prophet and his companions. That struggle was also the living embodiment of the message.  The outcome of that struggle was the Islamic State.  The Islamic State is an inseparable and invaluable part of the totality of Islam.  It may be significant to note that Allah ta'ala did not declare the completion of the deen of Islam until after the Islamic State had been firmly established and made dominant in its immediate environment.

The Islamic State is the Muslims' natural habitat, and their dependence on it as complete as that of fishes on water.  If Muslims survive without the Islamic State they survive only like fish in a bowl or an aquarium. The nation-States where Muslims live today are aquariums in which Muslims are denied their freedom.  The Islamic State is the sole instrument of freedom.  The only freedom that has any meaning to a Muslim is the freedom to live and die for Islam under Islamic authority.  Any attempt to produce a model of Islamic practices that allows Muslims to opt out of the struggle is an attempt to restrict the impact of the Qur'an and the Sunnah.  Any State, even if established by Muslims in the name of Islam, that is dependent for survival on the traditional enemies of Islam, couldn't be counted as an Islamic State.  And no State that relies upon any form of nationalism for its legitimacy can at the same time claim to be Islamic.

The task of restoring to the Ummah its central functional institutions must begin with the Islamic movement's commitment to converting the entire world of Islam into a limited number of Islamic States.  No Islamic movement that takes a geographically limited view of its role is entirely Islamic.  Ten years ago, when a group of us began to meet here in London to consider the state of the Ummah and what, if anything at all, we could do about it, we came to some conclusions that were written up as the Draft Prospectus1 of the Muslim Institute.  It is a relatively short document, perhaps no more than 300 words in length, but it took us nearly two years to formulate, debate and write.  When we decided to publish it we were so tentative in our approach that the final product was still entitled a ‘draft'.  The document reviews the situation of the entire Ummah and said that the institute we proposed to set up would attempt once again to reformulate the intellectual and institutional framework at the level of the Ummah.  We then said, that we were going to work towards the mobilization of the resources of the Muslims in the pursuit of the collective goals of the Ummah. And we also insisted that the Muslim Institute must not be founded by an exclusive group from any one geographical, national, or ethnic part of the Ummah.  The Muslim Institute must attract members from all parts of the Ummah.

Today we have 800 founder members in all parts of the world.  We are small, very small.  But we have chosen to be small because we have been conscious of the Sunnah and the method of the first Islamic movement led by the Prophet Muhammad.  That method is to get it right, insist on what is right, even if what is right was to be rejected by the vast majority.  Having got it right and having got it small, the technique exemplified in the Sunnah is to keep plugging away, probing the environment. Ten years ago we expected that it would be between fifty and a hundred years before a breakthrough relevant to the entire Ummah occurred on the stage of history.  The main reason for our pessimism was that the movements of our time that claimed to be Islamic lacked the worldview of Islam.  Their programmes, activities, and methods failed to challenge the existing reality, the nation States, and the post colonial regimes and their political, social and economic structures.  Some of these movements were, and still are, content with playing out their roles as national or regional political parties.  They seek and receive generous patronage from their own nation-States as well as other similar States that wish to deceive the Ummah in the name of Islam.  We took the view that this type of ‘Islamic' party could hardly be an instrument of the fundamental and total change that was required after the ravages of the colonial period.  But it appeared to us then that this type of ‘Islamic' party would remain in vogue for some considerable time to come.  Our task was to keep hacking away at them and pointed out the hallmarks of a true Islamic movement.  We expected to be at this stage which, in the light of subsequent experience, we may now all the ‘pre-revolutionary' stage, for a generation or two.  But, as we know, the Islamic movement in Iran, of which we had little knowledge or understanding, has catapulted the entire Ummah into a post-revolutionary period.

In the last three years I have written and spoken a good deal on the subject f the Islamic Revolution.2,3  I do not propose to dwell on the Subject here at any length, except to say that I have been deeply touched by the transparent taqwa of the leadership of the Islamic Revolution.  It is their taqwa and humility that has captured for them the minds, hearts and souls of the people of Iran.  It is also this taqwa that has enabled them to overcome the campaign of murder, war and sabotage that the imperialist powers and their local agents have let loose against the forces of Islam.  This taqwa and humility have also exposed the false commitment to Islam that the western-educated, liberal soft-centre carried in the Revolution.  Bani-Sadr and his like could not match the taqwa and humility of the ulama of Iran.  The Islamic Revolution and the Islamic State demand a degree of commitment and sacrifice that only true muttaqueen can produce.

The imitators of taqwa soon fall by the wayside, as indeed then have done in Iran.

The other features of the revolution that have made a deep impression upon us are the total mobilization of the Muslim masses of Iran in the Islamic movement and the absence of a western-style political party framework. The power of the mobilized masses has been repeatedly tested by the counter-revolutionaries, in collusion with the enemies of Islam outside.  The point that has been made beyond and doubt is that the superior organization and technology of domestic despots and invading enemies are no match for the power of the Muslim masses mobilized under a muttaqi leadership; and mobilized masses have acquired for the Islamic State of Iran a degree of independence in both domestic and foreign relations that is quite unknown in the framework of modern political science in international relations.  One as only to look at the abject subservience and impotence of other Muslim States to appreciate the power of a truly Islamic State and the impact an Islamic State has on its environment.  The Islamic State, because it is the instrument of Allah's will on earth, has an ability to deal with Satanic powers that no secular State can match.  These qualities the Islamic State of Iran has demonstrated in such measure that even its most stubborn opponents have had to concede that this is unique in Islamic history since the days of the Khulafa' ar-Rashideen.
During recent visits to the Islamic State I have become aware of something else.  It is that the undoubted taqwa of the leadership has filtered through to all the levels of the society.  From the earlier days of the revolution there has been a commitment to restructure the social, economic and political order of the country at all levels, but this is a long task and could never have been achieved all at once.  This has been repeatedly acknowledged by Imam Khomeini.  Being Islamic has never meant being perfect. Imam Khomeini has insisted repeatedly that this is only the beginning of the Islamic Revolution and that the emergence of an Islamic State with a completely Islamic social economic and even political order will take a long time.  Two years ago, speaking at a seminar in London, I argued that the Islamic State that emerges after a hiatus lasting hundreds of years would only be a ‘primitive model' of the ideal.  But once even an approximate model has come into existence and has survived the initial and inevitable onslaught of the enemies of Islam, a breakthrough has been achieved. This is manifestly so in the case of the Islamic State of Iran.  The commitment to restructure the society at all levels has also survived the blandishments of the ‘right' and ‘left' of the westernized elite created by the imperialist culture.  The miracle, however, is that the undoubted taqwa of the leadership has transformed the Muslim masses ahead of the restructuring of the social order.  The revolutionary process and the wars of internal subversion and external invasion have closed any remaining gaps there might have been in the mobilization of the masses and the leadership.  The same processes have infused among the people of Islamic Iran all the attitudes and behavioural norms of a muttaqi society.  The most common manifestation of this taqwa at all levels is the burning desire among people to attain shahadah.  The second most visible manifestation of social taqwa, if I may coin a phrase, as the near universal return to hijab by the Muslimahs of Islamic Iran.

At this point I crave your indulgence to make digression into western political science. The Christian theological doctrine of ‘original sin' has fond expression in the Hobbesian view of man.  According to Thomas Hobbes, man is by nature evil, aggressive, selfish and brutish.  Human life, unless protected by a political Leviathan, is ‘nasty, brutish and short'.  This proximity of theological doctrine and secular thought is no accident.  The claim of western scholars that they are now ‘free' thinkers -free, that is, from the ‘superstition and ignorance' of religion- is quite unjustified.  The fact is that Christian thought, especially in the area of assumptions about the nature of Man, is still dominant.  More recent thinkers such as Max Weber have held the view that a ‘society is held together by its inner conflicts'. There is a school of thought in western universities today, often referred to as behaviourism, that maintains that social conflict is a positive factor in any society.4  Whether a society is actually held together by its inner conflicts or not, the important thing is that western observers of western societies think it is.  The question that arises for us is, what hold an Islamic society together?  For many years I wondered over this question.  The obvious answer would appear to be that an Islamic society is held together by the power of the Islamic State and by the people's allegiance to the Kahlifa or the Imam.  But this answer never quite satisfied me, though the Islamic State and allegiance to the Leader are obviously part of the answer.  Having seen the social order, as it is taking shape in Iran today, I have found the answer I had been seeking for may years.  The answer to the question -what holds an Islamic society together>- is that an Islamic society is held together by inner taqwa.  The Islamic State and its Khalifa or Imam are the higher manifestations of taqwa.  Political authority in Islam emerges from the taqwa of the Muslims and in turn becomes the instrument and protector of that taqwa.  This formulation is also useful in another important area.  It is essential for us to be able to draw clear distinctions between western civilization and ourselves.  Many Muslims today are persuaded into believing that modern western societies reflect ‘Islamic values' because of some superficial resemblances.

What we have to understand clearly is that no ‘good' that is imbedded in evil held together by its inner conflicts is ‘good' any more.  It is certainly not worthy of the attention of the Muslims. Muslims have to restructure their own societies.  Societies based on capitalist or communist philosophies and such negative concepts as inherent conflicts among men and classes have nothing in common with Islam or Muslims.  Their goals and values are diametrically opposed to Islam. 

I have argued before that Islam came as a movement and has always been a movement.5  At times it has been a movement without a State, as in Makkah, then a movement entirely organized as a State, as in Madinah under the Prophet, upon whom be peace, and under the Khulafa' ar-Rashideen.  At present there exists a global but diverse Islamic Movement.6

The Hajj is clearly an annual expression of the wahadah of the Ummah.  It is an institution clearly provided by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as a  powerful  force.  In the next phase of Islamic history the Hajj must clearly play a crucial role in the motivation and the mobilization of the Ummah to face the challenges that confront us.  Exactly how this has to be achieved is one of the issues I hope the learned scholars assembled here will debate in the next few days.  The immediate goal of this seminar is to begin a process of discussion, which will ultimately restore the Hajj to the original dynamism given to it by the great exemplar himself, the Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace.  But let us be quite clear on one point: it is that the Hajj is also a mirror to the Ummah.  Any attempt to try to ‘revolutionize' the Hajj ahead of corresponding changes in the Ummah as a whole is bound to fail and might even introduce new conflicts.

This is an academic seminar, but its planning reflects a view the Muslim Institute has consistently subscribed to; our view is that academics must abandon the proverbial ivory towers of scholarly isolation.  Throughout history Muslim scholars have been men with zest for participation in the great debates, matters of State, and even, battle of the day. The time has come for scholars to play their part in the mainstream of the Islamic movement.  Apart form the scholars, there are among us writers and journalists.  Our hope is that the discussions here over the next few days will give our writers and journalists new insights that will be reflected in their writing in the years ahead.  The third group at this seminar is that of brothers who is otherwise active in the Islamic movement.

We have also invited a small number of our brothers from the Muslim community settled in this country.  Usually the ‘big Islamic occasions' in London ignore the community.  We were anxious to make this seminar immediately relevant to Muslims living around us.  But the size of the academic seminar itself should not be enlarged any further.  We have, therefore, introduced a ‘public day' at the seminar, which will be our final session on Saturday, August 7.  Over the four days we have also arranged an exhibition of books, another exhibition of photographs, and a programme of films and slide-shows. The Muslim community living in London has been invited to come and see these exhibitions.

A final point I must make briefly is that not every one of you has been treated exactly alike.  The basic principle of mobilizing existing and widely dispersed resources is to distribute burdens according to participants' abilities to pay.  Therefore, there are some guests who have paid their own way, often coming from such distant countries as South Africa and Pakistan.  There are others who have met 50 percent of the cost of travel themselves.  We have worked long and hard to find cut-price fares for others.  For your understanding and cooperation in this matter we are extremely grateful.  I sincerely hope that the arrangements we have made for your stay here are satisfactory and that you are comfortable.  We a trying to offer you Islamic hospitality without the use of the Hilton or the Intercontinental. We have been mindful of the fact that the Islamic movement will need several gatherings a year in many parts of the world.  The resources of the Islamic movement, wherever these might be, are part of the bait al-mal, and the highest standards of care must be taken in their utilization.

Finally, I pray to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that He may give us strength and guide us in our deliberations over the next few days, Ameen!