One of the unique competitive advantages that MPACUK have over other groups is our ability to live by our creed. When MPACUK talk about Mosque reform, we are not just happy for the word and message to be adopted; we don’t see as a success measure the adoption of the word as a goal in itself. We want to see Mosques reform to serve and defend their community and religion. When we talk about Palestine, we then work to see pressure placed on Israel until there is a ‘just’ settlement. When we demand accountability, we hold the powerful and privileged to account and allow ourselves to be held accountable. When we demand Muslims engage in the political process, we are right there, in election after election. We live by our words, we will not allow them to be used as idle chatter, as a form of self-approval and as an excuse to do nothing.

Our words are our deeds. Words have been adopted before, then debased by a lack of action, and will be again. History will repeat itself and the Ummah will stay on the merry go-round. The Muslims almost have the unique ability to absorb intellectual sustenance and then produce fat and a noxious waste as the output. MPACUK are determined to break that cycle, our deeds will speak louder then our words and our words will be loud.

If you’re wondering where I am going with this, well, I’m going into your very psyche, your experiences, your life. Let me explain. The great Tabligi Jamaat (TJ) movement, founded on the principles and ideology of perfecting oneself, now results in earnest young men scurrying around in short trousers quoting like parrots the powerful rallying cry ‘Perfect yourself, brother.’ After two hundred years the inspiration behind the movement, that had a possible answer to colonilisation, is nothing more then another group with no vibrancy, no answers to today's problems and no understanding of the true meaning of the insight that Allah gave the founders. You know these people, you know the movement, you have met them and they are part of our shared experience, yet they have gone unchallenged and we have accepted their debasing of a powerful Islamic concept.

Let’s break it down. “Perfect Yourself” has become to mean, as identified by the young men, the obligatory prayers, fasting during Ramadan, Hajj, Zakat and the Shahada. However the movement has maintained momentum but has it maintained its vibrancy? Surely the Tabligi scholars must understand that perfection does not stop at the basics, a perfect house is more than the support pillars. A perfect human is more then the man who fulfils his obligations to Allah - to attain perfection he or she must at least fulfill an obligation to Allah, his fellow man, nature and the environment. After all, for a man to attain perfection he has to be in a social environment where perfection is a standard, either achievable or unachievable. Perfection cannot be an insular goal of self-achievement. When have you ever heard a young acolyte of Tabligi Jamaat knock on your door and say, “After prayers will you join us, teaching young kids mathematics?” or providing ‘meals on wheels’ or helping out at the local hospital? They don’t, because social work is considered a distraction from the self-perfection model. They don’t and you don’t ask them to.

The sound bite ‘Perfect Yourself’, the insight Allah has given the founders of TJ, has been wasted by the insular and the dogmatic. The ideology of perfection has turned from a meaning of becoming a ‘super man’ into one of ‘protecting yourself’. Protecting yourself from failing an obligation, protecting yourself from hell fire, protecting yourself from western contamination? The volumes written by contemporary TJ scholars on the evils of having an interest-bearing current account and the need for Halal finance, finds an audience far more readily than books examining the priorities of Jihad and how to ‘struggle’ to do good deeds within the Western democratic system. Where is the Tabligi scholar who writes books on the ‘perfection’ attained by being accountable and the ‘perfection’ of holding people to account? But TJ are not the only ones whose founders were blessed with an insight of a powerful solution by Allah and whose legacy was squandered by unimaginative and uninspiring followers.

The power of the Khilafa has been championed by Hizb Tarir (HT). The idea naturally is an Islamic heritage, a form of Government that should be benign, responsible and responsive, a unifying force for Good. Allah blessed the founders with the idea, within their lifetime they saw the end of the corrupt Ottoman Caliphate and the anarchy that followed. The founders preferred the former.

However HT, the movement, seem to think that the Caliphate will be established by talking. They think that once it arrives all the Muslims' problems will magically be resolved, tyranny banished, a utopia on earth. The idea of a unified political force is argued as a priority fard. The dream of being free of oppression has turned into a panacea of Islam’s problem. The original idea gifted from Allah, has turned into an insipid movement where reaching a tipping point by talking will magically create the unified Muslim Government. They (HT) couldn’t open up a sweet shop by talking, without fighting against injustice; they can’t solve a litter problem, let alone the issues facing the corruption and occupation of the Muslim world. Their members, intelligent, thoughtful and articulate seem to gloss over the barbarism and tyranny many of the Khalifa’s unleashed on their very own population.

They don’t deal or mention the issues of the dueling Khalifas of the Abassids v Fatimids, both claiming to be decedents of the Prophet, both in fact puppets to the Seljuks and Mamluks, who in the name of the Khalifah, killed more Muslims then the Crusaders did. They don’t deal with the historical fact that the Damascus Khalifa at his height fell to the Moghuls? And when challenged they have a tripe answer, that the Khalifas had left the teachings of the Prophet and Qur'an.

MPACUK are not against the Khalifa concept, we are against the idea of a Khalifa, turning from a powerful answer to contemporary problems into a vapid, indoctrination, set in time, unchangeable, unmovable, redundant to today’s problems. The Khalifa cannot be defined as anti-Western, or as anti-democracy. It must be defined as a unifying salve, beneficial to the Ummah and non-Muslims.

HT’s adherents are looking through the rose-tinted lens of hope, but the state of their adherents gathered as a popular movement is drawn from a low caliber Ummah. An Ummah who would rather talk than act, an Ummah who thinks spouting hot air to other Muslim’s takes them one step nearer to their goal of a unified Ummah. In the entire time they have been in the UK, they struggle to pinpoint a single concrete example of their achievements to gain the utopian goal they pretend to adhere to. Until that is, they want to open a sweet shop, then with a moment's self-reflection, they get practical and do concrete steps?

There are hundreds of powerful ideas. Muslims have been inspired to adopt. Allah has granted insights to great men and women yet after the insight, their followers, who lack a stomach to really change their situation, turn the insight into a dogma, turn the solution into the problem, and focus their movement's energy on yesterday’s problems.

MPACUK accept these and other ideologies and insights. We accept we need to gain perfection, we accept the need for a Khalifa, we accept that meditation can help us build a relationship with Allah, we accept that ‘we must go back to the basics’ and many other insights that help us understand the world we live in. We accept the Qur'an, the Sunnah, the Prophets, Angels and Scholars, but what we do not accept is the situation that Muslims find themselves in. And that resistance and refusal to accept that Muslims are victims make MPACUK a potent force. When we come across an ideology we can quickly determine if its one that pacifies the Muslims or whether it liberates them; does it do more harm than good; whether it is refutable by Islamic scholars, or is it another truth that has to be accepted and is it practical. And in these dark times, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Join MPACUK. Join the Jihad.