Between
a rock and a hard place
by
Imran
Khan
Fanatics
to the left of us, fanatics to the right of us, with Pakistan caught in the
middle. There are two minuscule fanatical groups, the influential liberal
fanatics and the religious fanatics, at either end of the spectrum. Trapped and
held hostage in the middle is the moderate majority, from westernized liberals
who are genuinely tolerant of others’ views to the genuinely religious with
open minds who believe that there is no compulsion in religion. There is also
plenty of ignorance and as a result plenty of confusion, especially amongst the
youth.
Because
to liberal fanatics modernization means westernization, they have to perforce
look down on their own culture and religion. Lacking a proper understanding of
Islam they see the religion through western eyes, convinced that it is a
retrogressive, primitive creed of ancient desert folk. Resultantly they are
convinced that Islam impedes Pakistan’s progress, meaning westernization. Thus
though the mullah has never been part of our effete and corrupt ruling elite, he
is blamed for Pakistan’s current crises. To the liberal fanatic secularism
means being anti-Islam, as in Kamalist Turkey. Lacking respect for and an
understanding of Pakistan’s history and culture, their every solution to
Pakistan’s problems is imported. Hence liberal fanatics have variously
advocated Marxism, women’s liberation, market economy, and other western
beliefs which are being boosted by a particular lobby for a western-specific
purpose at a particular point in time. Only free minds can have the original
ideas so desperately needed by this country.
Liberal
fanatics credit India’s recent economic success not to the country’s better
education system but to the ‘westerness’ of Indian culture as falsely
portrayed by some of their TV channels by attempting to remove all Indianness
from their characters. They don them in Western clothes, give them American
accents and, most shockingly, white skins. Indian looking caricatures are
objects of ridicule while the hero or role model is always fair and totally
westernized.
These
people have only to study colonial history of the past two centuries to realize
that wherever an alien culture was imposed on an indigenous people it caused
mass upheaval, disruption and destruction to their way of life. From the
Aborigines of Australia to the Indians of the Americas and most of Africa the
local people fell between two stools in the name of modernization. The societies
that have been success stories have all used western knowledge but developed in
the context of their own culture and environment like Japan and China. Desi
liberal fanatics preach secularism, yet they don’t fully understand the
evolution of secularism in Europe. Martin Luther’s movement was to free
religion from the stranglehold of the church, not to get rid of religion
altogether. The Desi secularists have
been heavily influenced by Marxism with its anti-religion and anti-family
message and American secularism. After the bitter Scopes court case in 1925, the
secularists turned fiercely anti-religion and after a hard fought campaign won a
huge victory when in 1963 the US Supreme Court actually disallowed the teaching
of religion in state schools. Martin Luther, who was a God fearing man, would be
turning in his grave at the thought of where the movement that he began to break
the tyranny of the church has ended up. Unfortunately our liberal fanatics are
bent upon imposing western secular values on a country where the vast
majority’s entire way of life is influenced by religion. Their arrogance
arises out of a feeling of ‘superiority’ that westernization bestows on
them.
When
our liberal fanatics talk of women’s rights it is not from the Islamic
perspective but a western one. Again the struggle of western woman for
emancipation is within the context of their history and culture, totally alien
to the Muslim experience. Hence when the real liberal Mohammed Ali Jinnah was
addressing the Aligarh students in 1938, he appealed to them to work for the
emancipation of the Muslim woman: "This is essential; but I do not want to
ape the evils of the West." Similarly, the other great Muslim liberal
Allama Iqbal always kept stressing to the Muslim youth to find their own way and
not "tread on others’ paths." Iqbal was an original because by
having in-depth knowledge of the Quran, Islamic history as well as European
philosophies he was in a position to critically evaluate Islamic as well as
western civilization. If only we had a scholar of Iqbal’s calibre today he
would have questioned the direction western civilization has taken; e.g. in its
exploitation of women, as in beauty contests, in advertisements where half-clad
women are used to sell products, or where fashion forces women to display their
bodies. He would certainly have commented on the proliferation of public
immorality in the name of freedom and its role in the breakdown of the family.
And, its impact on the devaluing of the role of the mother, a role so highly
regarded in Islam. Iqbal would certainly have questioned homosexual marriages
and gay couples adopting children.
Liberal
fanatics overlook such issues because westoxified minds are in no position to
critically analyze the direction in which western civilization is headed. The
irony is that in the Victorian age, the peak of British civilization, public
morality was much higher than in most of the Muslim World today. Indeed, the
Victorians thought Islam a permissive religion. Consequently, and not
surprisingly, the family system and values were strong. If the liberal fanatics
had their way we would destroy the only institution that is keeping our society
from completely falling apart, our family system. Already satellite and cable TV
are causing tremendous frustration amongst our youth and putting a great strain
on our social system.
At
the other extreme we have religious fanatics whose numbers are growing by the
day. The main cause of religious extremism is injustice: the growing gap between
rich and poor, with the majority of the population being denied education,
employment, health and justice. With no stake in the system, militant Islam
becomes appealing to the dispossessed. Add to this the injustices against
Muslims in Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia, Palestine and so many other places. Eighty
percent of all refugees in the world are Muslim. It is not hard to see why the
idealistic and romantic amongst us are driven to take up arms. In the last
century such European romantics fought in the Spanish Civil War. There are, of
course, religious zealots who through sheer ignorance decided to force their
uninformed version of Islam through the barrel of the gun. Such bigots have done
tremendous damage to Islam as they have failed to understand that Islam is a
battle for conquering hearts and minds. The Quran repeatedly says that there is
no compulsion in religion. The Messenger (PBUH) was told by Allah in the Quran
that his job was simply to proclaim His message, the real meaning of Iqra
“Proclaim the Word of God who created Man from a clot.” Whether people
converted or not wasn’t Muhammad’s (PBUH) business. There are yet others who
have killed fellow Muslims in the name of their sect, doing the greatest damage
to a religion that constantly preaches tolerance and rejects sectarianism,
tribalism and clannishness of any kind other than the ummah,
the universal brotherhood of believers on One God. The worst of the fanatics are
those who have actually made Islam a business proposition. Then there are those
who have become fanatics as a reaction to their religion and way of life being
threatened by western culture. This is because of little understanding of
western culture due to a sub-standard education system in which everything
western is regarded with suspicion, part of a western or a Jewish conspiracy.
This group is not only anti-west but is also anti- all the westernized Pakistani
elite.
As
to the question about how a country deals with the complex issue of religious
fundamentalism, the liberal fanatics have only one answer, one very close to
Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’: they want the army to take them on. The same
group that, quite rightly, preaches dialogue with India, has the most illiberal
solutions for its own countrymen.
In
fact liberal fanatics are not equipped to hold any dialogue with religious
fanatics simply because they are not armed with sufficient knowledge of Islam.
In any case religious fanatics consider liberal fanatics (with some
justification) as toadies of the West. We need an Iqbal to fight religious
bigotry for the only weapon against fundamentalism is enlightened Islam.
Fanatics need to be told about Islamic history, how other religions and other
points of view were tolerated in days when Europe was ruled by bigotry and
ignorance. Islam never knew the savagery of the Inquisition where people were
put through unimaginable tortures in the name of religion. As early as the 9th
Century AD Muslim scholars were debating the rights of the child. The
sophistication of debate was such that a scholar, before putting forth his point
of view, would start by saying, "it is possible that I may be wrong."
It was this freedom of thought and the spirit of inquiry that created the
intellectual atmosphere that enabled the Islamic World to produce all the
world’s top scientists for 750 years. Had it not been for the sacking of
Baghdad by the Mongolians in 1258, and had the autocratic Mongolian mindset,
that stifled debate, not taken over the Muslim world, it would not be in such a
sorry state today.
It
was scholars like Jamal-ud-din Afghani, Mohammed Abdu and Iqbal who talked about
the movement of thought through Ijtihad.
Iqbal argued that just as the European Renaissance and Reformation were
triggered off by the acquisition of knowledge from the Muslim universities of
Spain, and the Middle East during the Crusades, it was high time that the
Muslims used western knowledge to "reconstruct religious thought." The
reason why even today Iqbal is regarded our greatest scholar is because he was
able to give the Islamic perspective on contemporary issues of the time, like
democracy, socialism, and capitalism.
To end fanaticism both religious and liberal we need to gather genuine Muslim scholars from Pakistan and abroad and hold debates on TV and radio. Pakistani youth needs to know the relevance of Islam to their lives in the 21st Century. We need to find "our own way" rather than importing ideologies that have no relevance to our lives and have failed to deliver. A modern day Ijtihad done by genuine Islamic scholars (and there are plenty of them in the world) will not only give us a common vision and values, it will also marginalise the extremists at both ends. Above all our ruling elite might finally break the shackles of mental slavery and find homegrown solutions to our problems