Author: R.Upadhyay
Publication: South Asia Analysis
Group
Date: November 16, 2001
URL: http://www.saag.org/papers4/paper364.html
The puritans of Islam are anxious
to wheel back the contemporary world order to the fourteen hundred years
old concept of their faith and create a pan-Islamic world polity. Those,
who take a vow to accomplish this mission through violent Jihad, have now
become the cult figures for the Muslim community. Historically, no sincere
or serious effort has ever been made by any section of Muslim community
to challenge and reform this fundamentalist approach of the radicals, which
is against the concept of individual freedom of faith. Thus a common pious
Muslim living in a non-Muslim environment is confronted and confused by
these concepts.
Some basic concepts that create
confusion among the conservative sections of Muslim population in India
are:
* Islam has divided the whole human
race into two groups of 'believers' (followers of Islam) and 'non-believers'
(infidels or Qafirs).
* Those, who accept Allah as supreme
and are fully submitted to the doctrine revealed to His 'last' messenger
Prophet Mohammad - are believers. Rest of the human race comes under the
category of non-believers.
* The world is presently governed
by two types of polities known as Darul-Islam (Islamic form of governments)
and Darul-Harab (non-Islamic governments).
* Since the whole world belongs
to Allah, it is the holy duty of every believer to establish Darul-Islam
in the countries presently under the governance of non-believers.
Thus the Islamic fundamentalists
have been quite successful in creating disorder even in Muslim majority
countries like Algeria, Afghanistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran,
and Pakistan and posed a challenge to the Muslim rulers of these countries.
Bassam Tibi, a Muslim writer in his book -'The Challenge of Fundamentalism
' (1998 page 27) maintained that the Islamic fundamentalists had challenged
the ruling elite in most of these states on religio-political grounds.
"Their avowed goal is to replace existing order by the Islamic state".
The birth of international terrorism
in countries like Syria, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran is an indication
that the fundamentalist forces in Islam are determined to create a different
order all over the world for achievement of their cherished goal. Israel
in Middle East, India in Indian sub-continent and the western world, particularly
the United States of America are presently the main targets of the Islamic
terrorist groups.
Basically, the political ideology
of Muslim fundamentalists is to push forward the Islamic mission and create
a pan-Islamic world order. For the 'rational Muslims', political Islam
of fundamentalists may be different from spiritual Islam, but as the situation
stands today, common Muslims are unable to assert themselves and make a
distinction between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. Unfortunately what
we see in India today is that even the Muslim leaders with modern education
have sought to exploit the fundamentalists' concept of political Islam
for fulfillment of their personal ambitions. Not to be outdone, even the
so-called "secular" parties, in order to earn their votes would prefer
to retain the medieval Islamic mindsets that way.
The emergence of the Taleban movement
in Afghanistan and the networking of the international terrorist organisations
with bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan have found support from some of
the Ulema in India. Organisation like Jamiat-e-Ahle- Hadith, Tablighi Jamaat
Markaz Dawa-ul- and the Harkat-ul-Ansar have actively provided ideological
impetus to some of the Indian Muslim groups. The SIMI is a case in point.
India with the second largest Muslim
population in the world is presently considered to be the centre of Islamic
institutions and even Taleban is known to be the followers of Deoband School
of Islam. The Indian Muslims suffer from many of the infirmities afflicting
their Pakistani and Bangladeshi counterparts, primarily, poverty and illiteracy.
Some of them are falling a prey to the fundamentalist preachers and sects,
many of whom having links with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia Thousands of madrassas
and Islamic institutions in this country are actively engaged in producing
the army of Islam and radicalising them to fight for a protracted ideological
war to establish Darul-Islam in this country as a part of their holy duty.
Against the backdrop of the fundamentalist
design of Islamic puritans as discussed above and also the prevailing situation
in neighbouring countries, could there be a concept of liberalism in Islam
for Indian Muslims? Liberalism is a term, which means to push an individual
to modernity. But modernity requires a vision for future. A section of
Indian Muslims may claim themselves to be modern in outlook but have they
asserted themselves? Have they ever spelt out their vision for future,
which looks forward for uniformity in the society? If Turkey with a majority
of Muslims can adopt Swiss laws for its personal code, why the Indian Muslims
are adamant to continue with Islamic personal laws of seventh century is
not understandable.
Mushirul Hasan, a noted Muslim writer
has initiated a debate on the loyalty test for Indian Muslims (Indian Express
dated November 14, 2001). He has rightly pointed out the issues on which
Muslims in India are often subjected to face some humiliating comments.
It however, does not mean that Indian Muslims are required to face a loyalty
test in their own country. Every sane Indian simply wants that nationalism
and patriotism should be above any relation between an individual and the
God. The problem lies with the Muslim intellectuals, who are not assertive
enough against Muslim fundamentalism. If a Hindu raises any voice against
Islamic fundamentalism, he is branded as communalist but when a Muslim
criticises Imam Bukhari, he or she is considered as progressive. Why this
double speak? Is it not the duty of Muslim intellectuals to come forward
openly and challenge the Islamic fundamentalists aggressively?.
The most striking point about the
'liberal' Muslims is that they are not taken seriously in Indian society
because of their half-hearted, and vacillating pattern of views on Muslim
political issues like Talibanisation of Islam in India, increase in the
number of madrassas to radicalise Muslim children, Uniform Civil Code,
Indo-Pak relations, infiltration from Bangladesh and terrorist activities
in Kashmir. Lest they bring the wrath of fundamentalist forces to themselves,
they always try to play a cautious and safer game on the issues of their
co-religionists and do not come out to call a spade, a spade.
The 'moderate' Muslims in their
attempt to overlook the ideological focus of the Islamic fundamentalism
are generally viewed as hypocrites or cowards by the nationalist forces.
While pretending to equate themselves with the secular west, they fail
to understand that the western secularists are dominating the fundamentalists.
On the other hand, they are found scared of the reaction of powerful fundamentalists
in the community as happened in the case of the reaction of Imam Bukhari
against Shabana Azmi. They in fact want their 'secular' friends in the
majority community to fight their battle. When Arif Mohammad raised his
voice in support of Shahbano case, no Muslim leader came forward to embrace
him as a liberal Muslim.
In the absence of any rational debate
on interpretation of Islamic scriptures, the common Muslims are not attuned
to listen to the reasoned voice of the Muslims, who claim themselves as
moderate, liberal or progressive. The failure of the saner section of Muslims
to convince the members of their community in India has given rise to suspicion
among non-Muslims that the former are not genuinely concerned about the
growth of fundamentalism in Islamic society. It seems that they have not
been able to change the general Muslim psyche dreaming for restoration
of Muslim power, which they lost to Britishers following the decline of
Moghal empire in eighteenth century as most of the Muslim organisations
in India drew inspiration from that very psyche.
Indian Muslims need to understand
the bitter truth that India is a democratic polity with over 86 % of 'non-believers',
who are not found inclined to accept Darul-Islam. They are required to
carve out their future on the basis of ground reality and reason, and not
in a welter of emotion and sentiment. They should live like real lions
created by God and not like the imaginary lions created by poet Iqbal,
who said, "Allah ke sheron ko aati nahin rubahi" (God's lions know no cowardice).
Statements like this caught the imagination of the Indian Muslims, who
opted for the path of conflict and confrontation on the mistaken premise
that what they were doing amounted to a jihad (crusade).
The answer lies with Indian Muslims,
who are required to take the initiative in bringing all the Islamic organizations
and institutions on a common platform and take an assertive position to
interpret the Islamic scriptures rationally to suit the Indian society.
They may even issue some fatwa on the basis of Islamic scriptures to justify
that like other Indians, the Muslim is also first an Indian and then a
Muslim. Let them permanently close the two -nation theory of Jinnah, which
divided the country in 1947. The forces that are still harping on the concept
of Hindu India and Muslim India are to be fought tooth and nail, for which
initiative should come from the Muslim leadership, if they want to show
that Islam is equally a liberal faith.
Unfortunately, the sole agenda of
the 'liberal' section of the Indian Muslims is only to draw strength from
the 'secularists' and guard against any attempt of reform in the Islamic
fundamentalist ideology of seventh century. So long they do not play an
effective role to change the medieval psyche of the vast majority of the
members of their community and remove the deep imprint of the myth of 700
years Muslim rule in India from their mind, their reasoned voice will have
no effect at all.
