In London's Trafalgar Square, revelers throw themselves each year into the icy cold waters of the fountains to celebrate New Year. In Paris and in Sydney, the Eiffel Tower and Sydney Harbour Bridge are lit up by the colours of a thousand fireworks. When the clock strikes midnight on December 31, people all over the world jump and shout and sing and dance that another year is over, and that a new one is just beginning. The celebration of Islamic New Year, in contrast, is something altogether different. Most people, in fact, will not even have noticed its passing earlier this week. In celebrating the new Hijrah Year, though, it might be well to remind ourselves, Muslim or otherwise, just what was being remembered. In doing so, we might learn something for our own time. Muslims believe that Islam speaks directly to the human heart and calls all people to a pure and simple worship of the One God, Allah. They believe that this was the call of Allah's Messengers down through the ages, starting with Adam, the first man, and Noah, the first prophet. In remembering the new Hijrah year (the Islamic year, based on a lunar calendar), Muslims remember the migration of Prophet Mohamed (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and of the first Muslims as they left everything and moved from all that they had known in Makkah, to a new life at the service of Allah in Madinah. More than just a journey, that first migration was a transformation. It marked a new stage in the development of Islam. Islam would not be a religion like any other. It would be a complete way of life. Sincere Muslim believers today are called to make that transformation their own as they leave behind the errors of the past and move forward to a better life, submitting as Muslims to the will of Allah. In those earliest days of Islam, after suffering great persecution at the hands of the tribe of Quraish in Makkah, it was finally revealed to the Muslim community by Allah that they should leave everything and migrate to a new place, where they would worship Allah freely and where Allah would become the centre of their life and their city. So it was that those first Muslims set off, with almost nothing, for a new life in Madinah. Those who had gone to live in Abyssinia returned and went with them. This is the event Muslims celebrate each Islamic New Year. The new Hijrah is not accompanied by any balloons or fireworks or jumping into ice-cold fountains. In fact, for Muslims, it is not a feast at all. Sincere believers throughout the world, though, will reflect on the meaning of the new Hijrah year and will take great comfort from it, for they know that Allah Almighty is in charge of times and seasons and that He cares for His Creation with an infinite care. Islam, they believe, calls all people to worship Allah: The word “Islam”, in fact, comes from an Arabic root word which means both “submission” and “peace”, Muslims are those who submit to Allah. What more potent symbol of that submission could there be than Hijrah? Muslims should be always on the move. They may live in this or that place, but their destination is to be with Allah for all eternity. This is the goal, the destination of Hijrah. They are asked to put their trust in Allah alone. If we can reach the stage where our only hope is in Allah, then all the world's wars and economic crises will not harm us or leave us in despair, as it does for those without faith, but will allow us to cry out that “there is neither strength nor power save in Allah”. So convinced were those early Muslims that Islam had come to change the thinking of the world that they even adopted a new calendar to show how things would now be different. Like Hijrah, a revolution is about much more than re-arranging the furniture or about who sits on the chairs. A revolution turns everything on its head and attempts to start again. In a revolution, the men of yesterday have had their turn, and failed. It is time for new faces to step forward with a new vision. We are all witnessing days of transition in Egypt. Transition is often painful. Many voices are clamouring and shouting about which way the country should go. If the voices of the people are to be heard, though, the vision will not come from the tired old political parties of yesterday, who have always been several steps behind the young protesters who have forged Egypt's Revolution, climbing over their shoulders to make short term political gains, but missing the bigger picture altogether. Winning seats in parliament is not everything. Events this year have given Egyptians the chance to do something new. From any point of view, it would be a shame to throw that chance away. Not many countries get the opportunity to put behind them the mistakes of the past and to start again. The protesters in Tahrir Square or Alexandria or many other of Egypt's cities don't represent all Egyptians. How could they? But the majority of them do represent an opportunity to do something new. Change, though, can be frightening. Often we don't know where events will lead us. There are others, too, who resist change because it threatens their own comfort, even though they are comfortable at the expense of others. Egypt's future is for all its citizens. In that new Egypt no person, be it a man or woman, will have privileges over another because of his religion or how much money he has in the bank. If Egypt is to change and the revolution is to succeed, the Hijrah Year surely teaches us something important. Faith often means taking a leap in the dark, like the leap Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) took in giving up everything and moving from Makkah to Madinah. Not all of Egypt's citizens are Muslim or Christian. Some of them are people with no religious faith at all. But all of them have hope for something better. The message of Hijrah for us here is that if we can change ourselves, forging a new Egypt will not be all that difficult Neither blockades nor invasions nor counter-revolutionaries can destroy the resolve of people of faith. This Hijrah we are called to leave old ways behind, giving thanks for all that has been achieved this last year and drawing all our help and sustenance from Allah alone. We are called to destroy all the idols which remain in our hearts and to worship Allah with a pure worship. Egypt is a land of deep faith and most of its people are motivated by sentiments of faith. If, as people of faith, we do our utmost to improve, and if we are able to think of others and the good of the country, we can quite confidently leave the rest to Allah. British Muslim writer, Idris Tawfiq, is a lecturer at Al-Azhar University. The author of eight books about Islam, he divides his time between the UK and Egypt as speaker and writer. You can visit his website at www.idristawfiq.co
