http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/op/stories/2001112700030100.htm
Islam at the crossroads
Islam that is being practised today looks
different to that preached by Prophet Mohammed 1422 years ago.
Practising Muslims all over the world may be following the five
basic tenets of this great religion strictly but the
Talibanisation of Islam had started long before the Pakistani ISI,
the American CIA and the Saudi secret service created Talibanism
to achieve their respective ignoble political ends.
"ISLAM," WROTE
George Bernard Shaw, "is the best religion and Muslims are the
worst followers." The atrocities committed in New York, Washington
and Pittsburg on September 11 in the name of Islam corroborate
what GBS wrote. As I watched those scenes of wanton devastation
and cold blooded mass murder on TV, I kept asking myself: do the
perpetrators of this heinous crime worship the same Allah, read
the same Quran and follow the same Prophet that I do? The
answer to these questions is NO. How Islam — intrinsically a
religion of peace and brotherhood — can be responsible for such an
apocalyptic act?
Islam, with over
one billion followers in 55 Muslim countries, extends from Gambia
to Indonesia. Muslims also live in Europe and North America and
account for 1 to 5 per cent of the total population of these
regions. France has the biggest Muslim population (six million) in
Western Europe. The total Muslim population of the U.S. was three
million in 2000, of which some 10,000 Muslims serve in the U.S.
armed forces. Although there are no Muslim Senators or Congressmen
in the U.S. at present, the House of Commons and the House of
Lords in the U.K. have each two Muslim members. There is hardly
any profession in Western Europe and North America in which
Muslims have not made their mark. Most of them came to the West as
economic migrants or in pursuit of higher education. Today the
tall and slender minarets of mosques and Islamic cultural centres
dot the skylines of major cities in Europe and North America.
Among the 6,000 dead or missing in the WTC bombings, the number of
Muslims has been estimated at between 500 and 1,500.
Distorted image
Never in its 1422
years history has Islam reached such a crossroads as it did on
September 11. It put itself under a microscope on that fateful day
for the entire world to examine it meticulously. The West, thanks
to Hollywood and its Islamophobic historians, invariably regarded
Islam as a religion of bearded mullahs, burkha-wearing
women and gun-toting suicide bombers. While some eminent European
historians and writers like Gibbon, Macaulay, Lawrence, Triffault
and Bernard Shaw have extolled several aspects of Islam, its
distorted image in the West was shaped by Islamophobes such as
Samuel Huntington, who considers a clash of Islamic and Christian
civilisations inevitable, William Claes, a former NATO
Secretary-General, who claims that Islam is the new enemy of the
West after the fall of communism and the Nobel-laureate V. S.
Naipaul, who believes that Muslim conquests dealt a blow to the
native cultures of India and elsewhere. Although many Western
leaders, including President Bush, visited mosques and refrained
from blaming Islam for the September 11 atrocity, the Italian
Prime Minister, Silivio Berlusconi, broke ranks to tell the world
that Western civilisation is superior to Islam which is stuck
where it was 1400 years ago. The only flicker of hope for
Islam-West relationship came from an unexpected quarter: the
Oxford Union. The union recently debated the motion "Is Islam
compatible with the West?" which was heavily defeated.
Slow decline
Islam was at the
pinnacle of its power from the 8th to the 15th century AD when it
ruled over Spain and, as many historians now acknowledge, Islamic
civilisation became the cradle of European Renaissance and held
the torch of medicine, science, arts and astronomy. It has been in
slow decline since then and it probably reached its nadir on
September 11. Muslims all over the world now seem to live in the
past. Whether you ask them about the absence of democracy in the
55 Muslim countries in the world, or about what Islamic economics
is, or about the status of women in Islam or the Islamic attitude
towards fine arts and music, the only answer you get is: `Ah! What
the Muslims (or the Muslim countries) are following is not Islam.'
The gulf between what a Muslim does and what Islam says has become
so wide that it is almost impossible to bridge it. Islam is now a
religion of paradoxes and its practice is totally inconsistent
with its preaching. Although the Holy Prophet had forecast only 72
Islamic sects during his lifetime, Islam today has proliferated
into hundreds of sects and sub-sects, each claiming to be its true
representative. Even in countries like the U.K. where the total
Muslim population is two million, dozens of extremist Islamic
groups have mushroomed and they seem to be setting the agenda for
the mainstream Muslims.
What is Islam? Is
it the religion which 21 million Wahabi Sunnis follow in Saudi
Arabia? Is it the faith that 60 million Shias in Iran practise? Or
is it the religion of 190 million secular Sunni Muslims of
Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country in the world? Sunni and Shia
are the two main sects of Islam with Sunnis constituting nearly 90
per cent of the total Muslim population of the world and the
remaining 10 per cent are Shias. The differences between these two
sects, which are often exploited in countries like India and
Pakistan, are political rather than theological. They worship the
same God (Allah), believe in the same holy book (Quran) as
the immutable word of God, and accept the same prophet (Mohammed,
Peace Be Upon Him) as Allah's last prophet. They also follow the
same five fundamental tenets of Islam (Namaz or prayers five times
daily, Roza or fasting in the month of Ramadan, Haj or pilgrimage
to Mecca once in a lifetime, Zakat or alms to the needy and poor
and Jihad or struggle for justice). The differences emanated
following the Prophet's death when one of his close disciples and
father-in-law, Hazrat Abu Bakr, was chosen the first caliph of
Islam and not Hazrat Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law,
whom the Shias believe the Prophet wanted to succeed (he later
became the fourth Caliph). Although Imam Khomeini, the
revolutionary Iranain leader, said in one of his sermons that
these differences are superficial and not doctrinal and that
members of both sects are Muslims first and last, Sunni-Shia riots
take place on the Indian subcontient with monotonous regularity
during Mohurrum every year.
Principles and practice
Islam that is
being practised today looks different to that preached by Prophet
Mohammed (PBUH) 1422 years ago. Practising Muslims all over the
world may be following the five basic tenets of this great
religion strictly but the Talibanisation of Islam had started long
before the Pakistani ISI, the American CIA and the Saudi secret
service created Talibanism to achieve their respective ignoble
political ends. Islam today has become synonymous with the
ultra-orthodox Sunni Wahabism of Saudi Arabia or the extremism of
such splinter groups as the Sipah-e-Sahaba of Pakistan or the
Hamas and Hizbollah of Palestine. Even in "the Islamic Republic of
Iran,'' which elects its President by adult suffrage, the will of
the people is subservient to the will of one un-elected person —
the supreme spiritual leader — who recently vetoed the appointment
of judges made by the elected President. The just, caring and
compassionate system of government that Islam stipulates seems to
have ended with the four Great Caliphs of Islam, whose exemplary
reigns are held in awe by all Muslims of the world even today.
Although the dynasties that followed — the Ummayds, the Abbasides,
the Fatimides, and the Ottomans — had a few good rulers, they were
intrinsically corrupt and hedonistic. Even today a majority of the
Muslim countries are ruled by tinpot monarchs or dictators or by
theocracies. The immense wealth of some of the oil-rich countries
is being squandered on the protection of the rulers and their
families by foreign powers while the people live under poverty,
fear and oppression. Although the Quran forbids any type of
compulsion, the Muslim rulers are imposing their own version of
Islam on their subjects. Fourteen centuries after its birth, Islam
has ended up with the Taliban, whose sole aim is to take Islam
back to the Dark Ages. What the Taliban stand for is best summed
up by this headline in the British daily, The Independent,
of September 19: "Taliban leader recreates `time of the Prophet'
by torture and repression". The eminent British journalist and
writer, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, recently urged British Muslims to
dissociate themselves from the Taliban. A hadith attributed
to the Prophet seems to be true today: "A people get the ruler
they deserve.''
No other religion
offers the same rights and equality to both women and men as Islam
does. Annie Besant wrote: "I often think that a woman is more free
in Islam than in Christianity. In the Quran, the law about
women is more just and liberal." But look at the status of women
in many Muslim countries. They are treated worse than chattels.
Before his marriage to Bibi Khatija, a successful Arab
businesswoman, Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) was employed by her. But
today women in some Arab countries are not allowed to work.
Although the Quran prescribes that both women and men
should be `modestly dressed', Muslim men in many countries compel
women to cover themselves from top to toe. In one Muslim country
that I visited, a woman was ordered out of the lift by the
lift-operator simply because a small tuft of her hair was showing
from her head scarf. After we came out of the lift, my British
colleague remarked: "This country is being run by lift-operators."
Despite several
stringent conditions that the Quran stipulates for having up to
four wives, polygamy in Muslim countries is now a rule rather than
exception. Divorce is strongly discouraged in Islam. But the
practice of husbands divorcing their wives by just repeating "I
divorce you'' three times has become so widespread that many
husbands in poor families repeat this divorce mantra twice
to their wives so that the wife lives the rest of her life in
total fear of her husband.
The two Islamic
practices or traditions that are mainly responsible for the
current Islamophobia are "Fatwa" and "Jihad". These are the two
most abused words of Islamic vocabulary today. They simply mean
"opinion" and "struggle" respectively (on an international scale,
Jihad also means a just war). The institution of Fatwa seems to
have come about for the early converts to Islam who needed some
quick guidance on Islamic way of life. A mufti or learned person
was appointed to give Fatwas. But today Fatwas are given
invariably by self-appointed muftis and mullahs and the total
number of Fatwas in circulation in the Islamic world may run into
millions. According to Michael Griffin, the author of an
authoritative book on the Taliban, the Deoband School of Sunni
thought in India alone "issued nearly a quarter of a million
Fatwas on the minutiae of everyday life since the beginning of the
20th century"! The famous Fatwa on Salman Rushdie from the Iranian
leader Imam Khomeini confirms the schism that exists between the
Islamic practice and principles. This particular Fatwa was more
political than religious.
No other word
describes more accurately the struggle or striving that a Muslim
has to undertake all his life to better himself/herself than
Jihad. But Muslims today seem to wage Jihad against their own
families and their own neighbours! Whether it is a minor communal
riot in India or the uprising by some Muslim terrorist groups
elsewhere in the world, the word Jihad is immediately invoked.
Only certain designated persons in any Muslim community or country
can declare Jihad but today every Muslim seems to have bestowed on
himself/herself the right to declare Jihad.
Indian Muslims
The Indian
Muslims, including the Kashmiri Muslims, are the perhaps the most
fortunate religious minority in the world today because they live
in a truly secular, pluralistic democracy in the world. Since
Independence, they have left a distinct mark in every walk of
Indian life. Perhaps they are also the most enlightened and
educated Muslim minority anywhere in the world. Secular Muslim
leaders like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Mohammed Ali, Shaukat Ali
and Rafi Ahmed Kidwai were not only Islamic scholars in their own
right but they, along with many religious leaders of that time,
fought against the partition of India. It is a paradox that the
partition was championed by an educated, secular Muslim elite and
not by the contemporary religious leaders and institutions.
Pakistan, which was created as a `homeland' for Indian Muslims,
was subsequently partitioned due to the intolerance and arrogance
shown by the Muslims in West Pakistan towards their
co-religionists in the East. Some of the Indian Muslims who
decided to move from India to their `homeland' following the
partition are still refugees or `mohajirs' in Pakistan. It is
ironical that the President of the Mohajir Quami Movement of
Pakistan, who lives in exile in the U.K. recently said that he
wants to enlist India's support to urge Pakistan to end its
discrimination against Mohajirs. The lessons learnt from the
partition are extremely grave and profound for Indian Muslims and
they should tell their brothers and sisters in Kashmir that their
long-term future is inextricably entwined with India.
The road ahead
If Islam is
considered a perfect religion by all its followers then it is they
who need to change and adapt and not Islam. Most of the problems
that Muslims face in the 21st century have arisen from their
ignorance of Islam and its true teachings. The first and foremost
change should come in the way Islam is taught to the children. The
teachers of Islam are themselves not very well educated or
trained. In India, for example, no Muslim student deliberately
chooses Islamic theology or Deenyat as a subject of study
at degree level. He/she is forced to study it only after they have
failed to qualify for admission in any other subject. Many become
teachers of Deenyat after their matriculation, without
adequate training. Even some of the ulemas or Islamic
scholars today are the product of this system. Since Islam has no
system of priesthood or clerics as Christianity, the choice and
training of teachers or scholars becomes crucial. In the West,
students generally study theology or religion voluntarily and
institutions like Oxford and Cambridge have produced some of the
most eminent Christian scholars. The great poet-philosopher of
undivided India, Iqbal, laments at the decline of Islamic learning
and knowledge not only in some of his poems but also in his
theological treatise Reconstruction of Religious Thought in
Islam. "The Muslim State", he wrote, "... was left in the
hands of intellectual mediocrities, and the unthinking masses of
Islam, having no personalities of higher calibre to guide them,
found their security in blindly following the schools" (here Iqbal
refers to the four Islamic schools of law and jurisprudence
founded by Hanafi, Hambali, Shafai and Malaki).
Rather than
blaming the West for all their problems — even if the West is
responsible for them — the Muslim states should look at themselves
and decide if their governments are based on the consent of their
subjects, as the Quran decrees, or they are themselves
being ruled by others. As Islam today straddles diverse cultures,
races and languages it should not dream of a new worldwide umma
or caliphate as some Muslims advocate. Every Muslim country is an
entity in itself and it should not look to others for taqlid
or emulation. The collapse of the last Caliphate in Turkey in
1924 was a turning point in Islamic history.
The treatment of
minorities in many Muslim countries leaves a lot to be desired and
it is imperative that the minorities are treated according to
Quranic injunctions and the Prophet's own treatment of Jews
and other minorities. No other religion values human life more
preciously than Islam, but the practice of publicly punishing
criminals — who in majority of cases seem to come from poor and
vulnerable backgrounds — still thrives in many Muslim countries.
It is simply not enough for a Muslim country to sign the
Declaration of Human Right of the United Nations as its member,
but also not to violate it.
Economic concepts
The Islamic
economics is a minefield. Despite a plethora of erudite books and
papers on this subject, several Muslim countries follow the
profit-based Western capitalist system. Interest, Muslims are
taught, is theft. If this is the case then how a bank or money
lender will lend money without taking service charge and inflation
into account? The concepts of Islamic economics may be laudable,
but Muslims have yet to see them implemented.
Unless all Muslim
countries embrace democracy as their system of governance, they
will remain unstable and insecure from within. What Iqbal wrote in
1934 is perhaps more valid and relevant today: "The republican
form of government is not only thoroughly consistent with the
spirit of Islam, but has also become a necessity in view of the
new forces that are set free in the world of Islam".
M. RIAZ HASAN
(The author, a UK-based Muslim NRI, has worked and travelled
widely in Muslim countries)
