Numbers Aren’t Everything

Deleted L · Jul 1, 2022

Numbers Aren’t Everything

By Bassam Zawadi

A rough estimate of the earth’s population during the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) time is 200 million. When the Prophet passed away, there were less than 200,000 Muslims. In other words, the Muslim population of the earth when the Prophet passed away was approximately 0.1%. Today, Muslims roughly comprise 25% of the earth’s population, with today’s population exceeding 7 billion.

That 0.1% went on to achieve what they achieved, while today, we are in the state we are in. No need for me to belabor the point all of you know too well.

Today, the Jews comprise roughly 0.2% of the world’s population, and things appear to be going pretty well for them from a dunya perspective. Many Muslims are baffled by “how only 15 million Jews in the world could be so powerful!” but forget that Muslims were even less than the Jews in terms of world population ratio when they first started off, yet went on to achieve what they did.

The Jews are not our role models; the early Muslims are. Despite their differences, they recognized their common threat and enemy and the core and fundamental Islamic values and principles that bound them together in the face of their common foes.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said:

“The nations are about to call each other and set upon you, just as diners set upon food.” It was said: “Will it be because of our small number that day?” He said: “Rather, on that day you will be many, but you will be like foam, like the foam on the river. And Allah will remove the fear of you from the hearts of your enemies and will throw wahn (weakness) into your hearts.” Someone said: “O Messenger of Allah! What is wahn?” He said: “Love of the world and the hatred for death.” [Sunan Abu Dawud]

This hadith teaches us something important. No matter how much the Muslim population grows, the billions and billions of us Muslims will never come qualitatively close as an Ummah to those hundreds of thousands of early Muslims who were dedicated to the faith above all else if we do not change and similarly prioritize Islam before everything else. However, the only question is whether we are willing to do that.