Author: Bhusan Bhat
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: October 9, 2001
The medieval dress code edict of
the Laskhar-e-Jabbar and its meek acceptance by Kashmiri women as a symbol
of separatist discourse; the September 11 terror strikes on America; the
Hijra (departure) of Osama bin-Laden to his hideout in Kandahar on horseback
(as a reminder of the Prophet's flight from Mecca to Medina 1400 years
ago); and the undercurrent of Muslim unrest and angst against the United
States every where, reflect the deep malaise that has afflicted Muslim
societies the world over.
Though living face to face with
modern civilisation and its paraphernalia, Muslims seem to have frozen
their mental construct of the world at a level the West abandoned six centuries
ago. Compared to their existing intellectual stagnation, Muslim Arabs did
exhibit greater mental flexibility during their formative years and made
significant contribution to the world of mathematics, astronomy, medicine
and philosophy in the Abbasid period from the 8th to the 11th century AD.
However, the combination of a cleric-led opposition to free thought, and
popular lower class anger against free wheeling Arab Princes and intellectuals,
saw the antediluvian work of Iman-e-Gazali in the 11th Century AD. His
voluminous tirade against reason, rationality and free thought has become
the Magna Carta of the Muslim intellectual world ever since. Gazali, who
was instantly accepted by Muslim elites as a genuine interpreter of Muslim
religious texts and tradition (Hadith), circumscribed the limits beyond
which Muslims are forbidden to travel.
Despite centuries of all sided inter-action
with practically all the civilisations of the world, Muslim societies have
straddled the world view of 11th century. Except for Kamal Attaturk and
his band of 'Young Turks', who replaced the Caliphate in 1924 with a secular
state, the rest of the Muslim world has witnessed no real cultural and
political renaissance. The resultant crisis, exacerbated by a morbid fear
of a rapidly changing world, and globalisation, has now assumed a systemic
character in most parts of the Islamic world. Muslim intellectuals are
at a loss to understand the real forces that shape contemporary history.
Their inability to fashion a rationally weighted response to the problems
confronting them, explains the logic of terror networks which rely more
on suicide attacks than on popular movements. Muslims stand to lose the
way Japan lost in World War II, despite the impact of Japanese air-borne
suicide missions on Pearl Harbor.
Islam is the only religion the West
has used in most parts of the third world to split anti-colonial and democratic
movements, thereby playing a significant role in strengthening extremist
positions within Muslim societies. By contrast, Hinduism, Buddhism and
various denominations of Christian faith in former colonies offered little
or no resistance to the evolution of a modern idiom in politics and sociology.
Both Buddhism and Hinduism have an immense capacity for accommodating and
absorbing conflicting thoughts, even heresies. The highly original and
brilliant Hindu idea of a succession of Avatars and living Gurus, who reinterpret
religion to suit changed circumstances, has enabled Indians everywhere
to adapt, change and even make important contributions to a range of modern
interests.
On a comparative scale, the Muslim
world, extending from Sahara in the West to Indonesia in the far East,
exhibits a picture of intellectual aridity. It is the resistance to modern
reforms in Muslim societies that explains why a terrorist thug like Abdul
Sayyaf of Afghanistan is able to assume the leadership of Muslims in the
far away Philippines. Or why Central Asian regimes become nervous and touchy
enough to go to the extent of banning the sporting of beards, and possession
of Islamic literature, by their nationals.
