United we stand

By Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam
(click on the name to know more abut author)

I am returning to this column after a long while, in circumstances that are far from pleasant. Today, the Islamic world is a sad picture of disarray, anarchy and violence–internal as well as with others. From Afghanistan to Iraq, Saudi Arabia to Syria and Somalia, Turkey to Yemen, it is a story of violence all the way.

Everywhere, both sites of the conflict are Muslim and the victims are almost always innocent non-combatants, quite often women, children and the old. People have been forced to flee their homes, crossing borders in desperation with little food and water and insufficient clothing in severely cold climates. Till they get recognised as refugees in their new land they have to sleep in the open icy climes.

The refugees flooding Christian Europe are Muslims. Another, and possibly the most significant haven for these refugees, is Turkey, a preponderantly Muslim country. All the victims and perpetrators are Muslims. The shared values of Islam should have glued them together, but the differences of ethnicity, religious sect and subsect, differences over national claims and other variables are tearing Muslim societies apart. Islam was meant to unite Muslims as well as the entire humanity.

Every day we read reports of violence, see on our TV screens, busy cities in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen bombed with huge casualties. Both sides are Muslim. Only a few hours before writing this piece the media were flush with graphic reports of the destruction of the historic heritage city of Aleppo in Syria, one of the oldest and most developed centres of culture.

President Bashar Asad’s forces, supported by Iran and Russia, have leveled the city and conducted a massacre barely seen outside Hitler’s Germany. The massacre has been so huge that Paris switched off the lights of the great Eifel Tower in protest and mourning. The UN Security Council, Europe and the US took note, but did nothing to save Muslims from other Muslims. This is a great moment for Muslims of all kinds, sects, ethnicities, nationalities and races to deeply think over what is going on, where does Islam stand, and where have the Muslim failed. This is not merely a political failure, but a civilisational one also.

To begin with, Muslims have miserably failed to evolve a political system which offers everyone some space, freedom of opinion and choice and a system that happily welcomes and accommodates difference. There is rarely any organised system of peaceful transfer of power in the Muslim world. One of the many examples is the blood-soaked Syria where Hafez al-Asad ruled for decades and passed the reins to his son Bashar before dying. The son is there to rule for as long as the father did, even if Syria is destroyed in the process.

What the Muslim states as well as Muslim societies are suffering from comes from a lack of appreciation and tolerance of diversity. This is largely a political failure because the system of governance in Muslim world (ranging from monarchy to various degrees of dictatorship) has failed to ensure democratic respect for difference: difference of race, ethnicity, tribal affiliation, religions and religious sect. To avoid a complete civilisational breakdown the Muslim world must debate on and evolve a proper political system for those countries and societies and must come to terms with modern ideas of state and nationhood. Civilisation must be anchored in Islam. Yet, as Akbar S. Ahmed wisely points out Muslims have got to come to terms with the post-colonial paradigm, of democracy, state and nationhood. Ahmed notes that because Muslims have failed to come to terms with the post-colonial paradigm we see people like Saddam in Iraq and Asad in Syria who destroyed millions of their own countryman. There are others like them waiting for their turn to devastate their own lands and people.

Unity is not possible without a certain liberal stance, tolerance and willing acceptance of diversity. We have to remember that God made a diverse world, and diversity is the essential feature of existence in the world. God says in the Quran that if He so desired He would have made everyone a Muslim, but He made it a diverse world, so that different races, tribes and clans could distinguish and identify each other.

Both for the unity of the Ummah and for peace within it as well as peace with other faiths a liberal and tolerant attitude is essential. For unity in the Ummah one has to recognise (as does the post-modernist literary theory) that there can be several different readings of a single text (including the text of scripture) and all of them could be equally valid.

This explains why there are so many sects, sub-sects and sub-sub-sects within Islam. It is largely because of different interpretations (readings) of the Quran and the Prophet’s (PBUH) traditions. Hence, it is not desirable to insist that only one of them is right and all other interpretations and sects/sub-sects based on them are dubious. Such a rejectionist view can easily destroy unity. It is also against the Islamic credo that plurality of opinion in the Ummah is a blessing from God and worthy of cherishing.

The emphasis on an acceptance of diversity is finely exemplified in an incident in the life of the 13th century Muslim sufi poet Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi. It was said that he did not believe in sectarian differences, to the extent that he accepted all the putative 72 sects of Islam as valid and equal to each other. There is the common belief in parts of the Muslim world that there will come a time when Muslims will be divided in 72 sects and only one of them will be right. Followers of all others will be consigned to hell.

When a hot-headed Muslim (there has never been a shortage of such fellows) came to learn of the sufi’s belief he confronted him: “Mewlana Jalauddin, I have heard that you tell people you accept all 72 sects as valid?” Mewlana Jalauddin Rumi said, “Yes, I do.” At that the man flew into a rage and began a flurry of expletives and choice abuses. The sufi listened to the abuses calmly. When the hot-headed man got tired and fell silent, Mewlana Rumi announced quietly: “And I accept fully this 73rd sect of yours.” Only such great men with their generous acceptance promote unity and avoid division in the Ummah and the world at large.

As long as we insist that our sect, sub-sect or sub-sub-sect is right and all others are doomed to hell, we will be promoting division and mutual hatred. An example from the subcontinent is illustrative. The Hanafi sub-sect of the Sunni sect is divided further into sub-sub-sects - Deobandis and Barelvis. Instead of cherishing their shared Hanafi doctrine they are at each other’s throats. Even within these two there are internal differences of emphasis. Differences can be ok, but hatred, division and violence are not. Both within Shia and Sunni sects there are sub-sects that are violently opposed to each other. There is a history of massive violence within sects and a long record of mutual suspicion and animosity.

India’s Muslim community is divided both vertically and horizontally. There is a distinct horizontal division in the name of masaalik, and there is a vertical division in the name of castes. Put together, they generate such animosity that their mutual ill-will transcends the capability of Islam to unite and heal.

The poet Iqbal wrote a hundred years ago which, in translation is “Divided you (Muslims) are in sects and castes/ Is it how people flourish in the world?” It is quite apparent that such mutual antagonism runs against the grain of Islam and brings disgrace to the Ummah. Enough is enough. Now let us close our ranks and follow God’s command: “Hold together (all of you) the rope of Allah and don’t create dissension in your ranks.” Muslims must pay heed to it.

They do not pay heed to the Prophet’s [PBUH] warning to Muslims not to unsheathe their swords against each other. Otherwise, the sword will never go back to the sheath. The sword that was unsheathed in the civil war between Sahabah (the Prophet’s (PBUH) companions has not gone back into the sheath. It must be sheathed now if our civilisation has to survive.

United we stand - 2

I am returning to this column within a week. The usual periodicity of this is once every month or so. The reason for this is the wide response to the last column under this title. The enthusiastic response to the article shows that Muslims are bothered about the widespread disunity in their ranks and they want to know the issues that divide us. This is also a good sign as knowing a problem brings us half way to resolving it.

By the way, understanding an issue requires clarity, which does not come easy to many of us. An example of this was a mail from one of our readers who suggested that the destruction of Aleppo (and much of Syria) is the handiwork of the French. This is not the case. The destruction has been wrought by Bashar Assad with the help of Iran and Russia, not France.

He wrote, rather unintelligibly, “The French general put his foot on Saladin’s grave and proclaimed”. It seems as if the French general did it during the destruction of Aleppo earlier this week, and hence France was responsible for the humiliation of the Muslim hero (Salahuddin Ayubi) and France was behind the destruction of Syria during nearly half a century of the illegal rule of the Asads (Bashar and Hafez). This understanding of a major tragedy in the Muslim world is not correct.

What this writer is referring to is an incident that is now almost a century old (the end of World War-I). After defeating the Ottoman caliphate (under which much of the Arab world, including today’s Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Palestine came), the French general marched in pomp to the grave of Salahuddin (Saladin) and proclaimed, “Saladin, we are here”. What the French general in his hubris did was motivated by racial memory and historical animosity. Saladin had driven European crusaders out of most of the Kingdom of Jerusalem nearly seven and a half century before the end of the World War-I, and the French general’s impudent behavior. Racial memory and historical antagonism are part of human life, but this does not have to determine all of our actions. We cannot live in the past, and cannot attribute all of today’s developments to the past.

As we said earlier, what is happening in Syria and most of the Muslim world indicates our inability to deal with our own affairs in a politically appropriate way. Coming back to Syria again (even though there are several like it) we have to remember that it was a certain kind of political environment that fostered the growth of the Asads, who destroyed their country. Even without the Asads and their partners in their crimes (Russia and Iran now) there has been sufficient internal hostility between tribes, ethnicities, sects and sub-sects to tear the country apart. Islam alone has not always been able to keep them united, because here we are not having a generic, undifferentiated, unified Islam, but several versions of it, practised by different sects, sub-sects, ethnicities and tribal groups.

In many cases, it is not the unified Ummah that is visible, but a constant fragmentation that is at work. It would be desirable for different kinds of Muslim communities worldwide to agree on a loose Ummatic consensus that accepts that across races, climates, continents and countries, ethnicities and tribes, political ideologies and cultural preferences Prophet Muhammad’s community is united in its amazing diversity as Allah wishes and in the love of the Prophet (PBUH).

This is the ideal (what should be), but not the real (what is). The effort has to continue through local, regional, national and international fora. However, to avoid a complete civilisational breakdown (towards which we are headed), we must never insist on a single, one size fits all Islam and try to enforce it across all cultures and climes. Cultural, ethnic and sectarian forces have frequently overwhelmed Islam’s capability to keep the Ummah united throughout Muslim history. Elaboration of this might need more space than this column provides. Suffice it to say that we must never try to enforce uniformity across the Ummah. Only diversity can keep it together in a symbolic bond. We must learn to live together separately, allowing everybody his or her space. In its great wisdom the holy Qur’an declares: “No compulsion in faith”.

To elaborate it further, nobody has the moral or legal right to eliminate all difference. No black person’s skin can be peeled like a banana to make him look like a white man (Salman Rushdie’s Moor’s musing), nor can a white man or woman’s skin be painted black. Likewise, the difference within and without Islam cannot be eliminated without permanently destroying peace. If we cannot accept the diversity within Islam, how can we live in peace with Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and others?

We have examples from other religions, societies and countries where people have accepted difference willingly and have agreed to live together separately in peace. An example from Germany is worth citing here. In the 19th century some leaders of the Christian church met Jewish leaders and told them, “We think you are in error and you think we are in error”. Then the Christian leaders said something to the effect: “We are free to have our ideas of each other. But, now onwards, let us decide to live with each other in peace”. That understanding led to the German Jews’ rise as equal citizens and the end of ghettos and everything they stood for. That understanding was destroyed by Hitler’s rise in the 30s of the 20th century.

However, after the defeat of Nazis and end of World War II, many Jews returned to live as equal citizens in Germany as they were living before Hitler. This is not an unblemished happy-ending story, but it shows people can (and should) try to live happily with others despite differences of faith, sect, race and ethnicity.

A more enduring and successful story comes from the secularisation of Europe, which was more fissiparous and driven by hatred between different Christian sects. The violence of Londonderry and Belfast which we read about in newspapers in our college days paled in significance compared to the violence and madness of 19th century Europe. Incidentally, the last viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, was assassinated by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) that was behind much of the violence of Londonderry and Belfast of those days. Even that violence has simmered down.

Much of Europe deflated religious antagonism and sectarian violence among Christians by delinking state from church. That means no sect had the patronage of the state and all citizens were equal as the state had no religion of its own. This arrangement has held strongly for more than a century. It is interesting to note that Europe was secularised not to protect Muslims, Jews or Buddhists, but to protect Christians from Christians. The same arrangement has held the United States together from the beginning. Right from the coming of Pilgrims (the first European settlers in America) Christian sects came to America because there was no religious preference there, and hence no persecution. Can we devise some innovative schemes like that to save Muslims from Muslims and accommodate our diversity happily?

United we stand-3

The unity, prosperity and wellbeing of Muslims as individuals, groups and countries is so important that by the time we come to the end of an article we realise that far more has remained unsaid than what has been said. This is sure that the political order in most Muslim countries is not appropriate to their requirements, their worldly aspirations, their material growth, political freedom and spiritual fulfillment. There is something grossly amiss.

It is often debated as to what kind of a political order will suit the Ummah. To answer this satisfactorily, we will have to keep in mind that the Ummah does not consist of a single racial, national, ethnic or cultural group located in a single geographical area. It consists virtually of folk from all racial, ethnic, national and cultural groups spread over a vast and diverse terrain, globally.

To accommodate such diversity, Muslims all over the world will have to decide what kind of a political order will satisfy their needs. A section of Muslims (mostly Islamists) believe that Islam allows only one political system, that is caliphate. That, at best, is a debatable assertion. The fact remains that both caliphate and something resembling monarchy, was existing within years of the passing away of the Prophet (PBUH). The Prophet’s surviving companions and later ulema recognised the legitimacy of both Hazrat Ali’s caliphate and Hazrat Mu’awiya’s non-caliphal rule, which has been described by some as mamlikat (kingdom). This position holds even today among Sunni Muslims who cite the efficient and powerful rule of Hazrat Mu’awiya, which led to great expansion of Islam. In mainstream Sunni Islam both models of state are recognised from the time of the last rightly guided caliph, Hazrat Ali.

However, those who insist that the caliphate is the only legitimate model should keep in mind that Islam has flourished under every system of government, from caliphate to sultanate, emirate to imamate, different kinds of dictatorships to some imperfect, poor version of democracy. It is not basically a matter of the survival of Islam, but the well being of the people, because Islam (the deen of Allah) is capable of surviving in all kinds of conditions, but people cannot live happily under a bad government.

The fact remains that Islam has been resilient enough to survive and prosper in all times and climes, including in the wake of the rise of nationalism when national sovereignty does not allow supranational authority. That is, Kuwait cannot be ruled from Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia cannot be ruled from Turkey. Sovereign authority cannot come from outside the borders of the nation state, which is a primary feature of the earliest caliphate. Because the exclusive idea of nation was not there in the 7th century, the early four caliphates could rule different countries (sometimes precariously) from one place. In the age of nation state it is not possible, although a union like European Union is possible for the Gulf countries (GEC) or a larger grouping of Muslim states (OIC), but even a well-knit body like EU cannot fully replace national authority. Bodies like GEC, OIC and others don’t have even that much of coherence. Still, the OIC, with a rotating presidency, can have features of a loose, 21st century version of caliphate of sorts. Such things need a lot of innovation as well as clarity of purpose, all of which are scarce today in the Ummah.

The Muslim experience of caliphate has been extremely difficult. Three out of the four first caliphs, the “rightly guided” ones (Khulfa-e-Rashideen) were assassinated. To have a clear picture of the enormity of the situation, imagine the United States. This is like the assassination of 33 of the 45 US presidents. Could the US survive such a calamity? Could any nation state survive such a situation? With the assassination of the fourth caliph the institution of caliphate staggered and could rarely regain its pristine glory after that over the last 1400 years.

With the end of the Turkish Ottoman caliphate at the end of World War I the institution practically ended. The fears of Indian supporters of the Turkish caliphate, that with the end of this institution Islam’s survival would be endangered, did not come true. The fervent appeals to the British to save it were at best nonsensical because the British had no interest in saving it, and at worst futile, because the Turkish revolutionaries were determined to sack the Turkish king, who was also the caliph.

The most significant, however, is that the caliphate had not come to the Ottoman Turks in a recognised, legitimate manner. When the Ottomans captured Arab lands, the Ottoman king simply removed the Arab caliph and declared himself the caliph. The caliphate that ended at the end of World War I was acquired thus. Even when it was alive it had no authority or influence over Mughal India or Safavid Iran, and a lot of other lands.

The point here is that the idea of khilafat (caliphate) in the present context is a mere abstraction, with little substance. The problem still remains as to how the Muslim world should rule itself to ensure maximum representation of the people in corridors of power, how can the people get their fair share of the economic cake, how can they enjoy maximum social, economic and political freedom. At present most of the Muslim world is not getting it. People have a right to representation, to be masters of their own destiny. Most of the Muslim world is not getting any of it. All this has to be ensured for Muslim nations and societies to function smoothly. Badly governed states are their own worst enemies. People in such states and societies do not see themselves as one. Political reform is a must for the Muslim world on an urgent basis.

To understand some of the content of khilafat, one has to remember that in the Quran God calls the first man, Adam, His khalifa (caliph), which means “deputy”. God being the King of all creation, Adam was the vice-regent of God on earth. But the caliphs of caliphates are different. The first caliph, Hazrat Abu Bakr, was designated Khalifatur Rasulullah (the Prophet’s [PBUH] caliph, or deputy). Abu Bakr took over the reins of the nascent Islamic state on the death of the Prophet (PBUH). Hence, he was Khalifatur Rasulullah. When he died, Hazrat Omar took over as Khalifah Khalifatur Rasulullah (the deputy of the Prophet’s [PBUH] deputy). In short, khalifah. However, Omar chose the title Ameerul Momineen (the chief of believers). This was a more reasonable choice as the caliph next to him would be called Khalifah Khalifah Khalifatur Rasulullah. And this title would go on protracting.

A point to be noted here by the proponents of khilafat in India is that this country was never ruled by a caliphate at any point in its history, much less by the Ottomans. During all the centuries of caliphates this country was ruled by sovereign rulers without the overlordship of a caliphate at any time. Even during the 600 years of the Ottoman caliphate Delhi had the Turko-Mongols (Mughals), and before them Turks ruled it without any guidance from, or overlordship of, the Ottomans, who were removed by Turks themselves as Arab lands abolished their rule, often with the help of the British. Keeping all this in mind we can guess how unrealistic the recurring movement for khilafat in India has been, especially the one that peaked in the 90s.

Without making a definitive choice of a particular form of government for the Muslim world one has to assert that the forms of government under which the Muslim world has been ruled since World War I have served them poorly, oppressed the people, denied them representation and often worked in the interests of Western powers rather than the interests of their own people. Such unrepresentative governments must be done away with at the earliest.

Mulukiyat (kingship) came early in Islam. Ameer Mu’awiyah, who was the founder of the Umaiyad kingdom, was the governor of Syria when the third caliph Hazrat Osman, married consecutively to two daughters of the Prophet (PBUH), was assassinated by self-claimed supporters of Hazrat Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet (PBUH). The assassins were roaming freely in Medina, the capital till then, during Ali’s caliphate. Ali called governor Mu’awiyah from Damascus to Medina. Mu’awiyah, a kinsman of Osman (the assassinated caliph), demanded that he would come to Medina only after assassins of Osman were caught and punished and Medina was cleared of rebels.

He rightly feared that he would be assassinated like his kinsman if he went to Medina. He refused to go there till his conditions were met, which were never met. Instead, Ali was assassinated by his own supporters. Thus ended the life of the fourth (and last) rightly guided caliph as Mu’awiyah was ruling independently in Syria. The Umaiyad kingdom took Islam to great victories and its expansion. Mu’awiyah was a companion of the Prophet (PBUH) and many of the surviving companions as well as the Prophet’s wives supported the Umaiyad kingdom. Sunni ulema of following generations have vouchsafed for the legitimacy of kingdom as much as caliphate as equally appropriate for governance in Islam. That shows Islam does not exclusively insist on a single form of government.

There are people in the Muslim world who still want to establish a caliphate (not being sure where). There are extremists among them who use objectionable language for the companions of the Prophet (PBUH) who were with Mu’awiyah. One such person was Hazrat Mughira who was one of the most revered ten companions (Ashrah mubashshirah) who were proclaimed by God in their lives as residents of paradise, (jannah). The point to consider is whether Muslims should go by God’s vindication of these men or the condemnation of today’s lovers of caliphate. Are these men wiser than God?

Advocates of caliphate today (like ISIS) ignore the basic principle that “politics is the art of the possible.” One such arm-chair political thinker from the Arab world writes self-righteously that democracy is bad and only khilafat is acceptable. He goes on to declare that a khalifah has to be an Arab. (What about the 600 years of Turkish caliphate? Was it illigimate because it was not Arab?) Then he insists that he should be a Qureish. Horror of horrors! Two people should contend for the caliphate and a panel of four persons should select one of them (like Abu Bakr) and cut the head of the second one. How great? He does not say what the supporters of the slain aspirant will do to the caliph and the people around them. The Shia-Sunni schism originated from there: Muslims drew their swords on each other and the sword never went back into the sheath, and the schism never healed.

For peace and unity we need an appropriate political order, which allows choice, representation, equal opportunity, peaceful (periodic) transfer of power, not mutual mass annihilation as we have been witnessing over the centuries.

United we stand - 4
A Century of Setbacks

Now that we are in the fourth week of the first month of January 2017, we look back at the last century (1917-2017) as lost years for the Ummah, for which it has truly been a century of setbacks. Rarely any major goals that the Ummah set for itself has been achieved, except decolonisation of Muslim lands in the wake of the two World Wars. Even this came about as a result of the destruction of the European countries that had colonised Africa, Asia and Latin America (the latter was largely decolonised earlier). The two wars between the colonisers devastated them and loosened their grip over the colonised lands, not the efforts of Mahdi, Omar Mukhtar and Grand Mufti Husseini.

However, no sooner than the Muslim lands were vacated, the European powers tightened their grasp on these lands by appointing their chosen men as rulers of these notionally free countries. With the defeat of Germany and its ally, the Ottoman Caliphate, British agents provoked an Arab revolt in the countries that the Ottomans ruled. The Turkish troops, badly beaten in Arab lands, went back to Turkey, that is, troops that survived the British-assisted Arab onslaught. That was the first manifestation of Arab nationalism, its victory and the defeat of the caliphate, an Ummatic institution. The Ummatic concept was discarded and a European concept, nationalism, chosen by the Arabs. However, the Arabs were soon betrayed by the British, who taught Arab Muslims the idea of nationalism in the first place. 

In the year 1917 the World War I ended. British Parliament made the infamous Balfour Declaration proposing to divide Palestine in two parts: one for the Jews, the second for the Arabs. After the defeat of the Ottoman Turks, Palestine (along with other lands) had come under the British. Palestine was a British “protectorate.” Since the Balfour Declaration the Arab world has not seen a day of peace. At one point the Saudi King Abdul Aziz bin Saud had cautioned Winston Churchill that division of Palestine to create a Jewish state would destroy peace for ever. However, Churchill ignored the sane counsel and the results are there for all of us to see.

A century of setbacks for Palestinians, Arab Muslims and the Muslim Ummah is completed this year. For some Palestinians, however, a century of their setbacks was completed in 2000 because they count the beginning of their sorrows from late 1890s, from the World Zionist Congress, when the surreptitious buying of Arab lands began. That means our troubles have roots that go back deeper in time. 

It is educative to look back at our largely futile efforts of the last 100 years that often brought us false dawns (Subh-e-Kazib) for a few moments of jubilation before the fearsome darkness of night enclosed the Ummah once again. Looking at the decline of the Ummah and the dominance of Western colonial powers over the Muslim lands ulema and thinkers had begun to conclude by the middle of the 19th century that the Western dominance had come because of some fundamental weaknesses in the Muslim societies and countries. But, what had caused those weaknesses? Some thought that Muslims had fallen behind because they had abandoned Islam, which was the cause of their rise in the first place. Men like Shah Waliullah Dehlavi and Mohammad bin Abdul Wahab Najadi pleaded a return to Islam way back in the 18th century. Both were disciples of an aalim in Madinah Munawwarah together before Shah Waliullah came back to Delhi. Shah Saheb was a fierce opponent of Western colonial dominance. 

After the middle of the 19th century two distinct types of revivalist responses began in Muslim lands, based on two distinctly different diagnoses of the malaise. The Muslim leaders exposed to Western education and culture asserted that the Muslim backwardness in scientific and technological knowledge had resulted in their defeat and loss of freedom to European colonisers. Hence their salvation lay in acquisition of Western science and technology. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, the founder of Aligarh Muslim University, was a prime example in what are today India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. His idea was cooperation, not conflict, with the British overlords for Muslims to be able to learn their science and technology from them. 

The opposite view, that of struggle against the British, was held by the ulema who were around in the 1857 uprising against the British. The founder of Darul Uloom Deoband, Maulana Qasim Nanautawi, represented this view. Maulana Nanautawi had fought against British troops in the uprising of 1857 at Shamli in western Uttar Pradesh. Internationally, one of the early, and among the best known “Islamists”, Jamaluddin Afghani, supported the line of struggle and denounced Sir Syed’s pacifism. However, Sir Syed chose peace and reconstruction rather than agitation, turmoil and further slide into chaos and destruction. More than a century and a half later Sir Syed has been proven right even though the opposite camp too has made its contribution to revival of Islam and the struggle for India’s independence. Earlier, these two streams were placed opposite each other, but they largely came together in 1912 when the direct disciple of Maulana Nanautawi, Maulana Mahmood Hasan, visited AMU and initiated the Jamia Millia movement (along with other leaders). Jamia Millia Islamia (New Delhi) began as a counterpoint to AMU, a British loyalist institution. Jamia, which is a full-fledged university today, began as the “lusty child of freedom movement” in Nehru’s word. It was the darling of Gandhi, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Zakir Husein and other freedom fighters.

In India, and globally, several streams of Muslim thought and action have come together like Darul Uloom, AMU and Jamia as several others have drifted apart. The idea is to seek common ground on which we stand together, rather than blow our differences beyond proportion and drive ourselves apart. It is interesting to note that a major stream in Islam began internationally during the time of Sir Syed and Maulana Nanautawi, as represented by Jamaluddin Afghani, Mohammad Abduh and his disciple, Rashid Rida. This stream was less focused on theology, madaris, sufi hospices (khanqahs) and what is today understood as traditional Islam. The West knew it as “political Islam,” or Islamism (also, Islamicism). This stream has been politically and militarily targeted by the West and pro-West regimes lately. This was not always the case. At the height of the Cold War, this group was backed by the West and pro-West regimes as a bulwark against the spread of the influence of communism and Soviet Union. A leading figure of the Islamist persuasion in the Sub-continent with deep influence on Arab leaders like Syed Qutb, Maulana Abul Ala Mawdudi, was ordered by President Ayub Khan of Pakistan to be hanged. On the request of the Saudi King Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, US President Lyndon Baines Johnson intervened with Khan to let him off. Neither the Americans nor the Saudis are kindly disposed towards Islamists today. After the Soviet Union was chased out of Afghanistan, all Islamists - militant and peaceful - were targeted by the West and pro-West regimes. That phase continues till date. The West and pro-West regimes are far less hostile to the traditional Islam of pious ulema and most schools of sufism. 

It is important to note that the Arab world has experimented with different “isms” without much success. They have not succeeded in even getting a Palestinian state as envisaged by the Balfour Declaration, or the United Nations. 

Instead, almost on a daily basis, the Israelis have been capturing Palestinian lands since the last seven decades. The continuous building of Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands has been a major roadblock to peace. Even the last ten US presidents have officially opposed (and unofficially backed) the building of these settlements. The UN has always opposed the building of such settlements, without effect.

It is interesting to see how over the last seven decades no Arab movement has ever been able to make any dent in the Western-Israeli dominance over West Asia and beyond. The most powerful movement to emerge after Mohammad Abduh and Rashid Rida’s Islamist movement was that of Arab nationalism, which was secular in character, socialist in pretension and a strong counterpoint to the idea of Ummah, which emphasises Islam as a rallying force, not region or race, nation or ethnicity. 

The rise of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism got a new boost with the dethroning of King Farouk of Egypt in a military coup by Gamal Abdel Nasser and his group of army officers. Farouk was a Western stooge of Albanian origin. The generation of Islamist leaders after the pioneering generation of Abduh and Rida, Syed Qutb, Hasan al-Bannah and others, initially supported Nasser and his colleagues. However, when they wanted their own leader to be the Murshid-e-Aala (religious guide) of the regime they were sidelined. When they tried to assert themselves they were imprisoned and, later, executed. Thus the top Islamist leadership of the Arab world was decapitated and their organisation, Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan-al-Muslimeen), was shunned by the Arab nationalist leadership.

The Arab world came heavily under the influence of the secular, socialist Arab nationalism when, in 1955, Britain, France and Israel invaded the Suez Canal. They were sternly chided by the US President Dwight Eisenhower and ordered to leave. Meanwhile, the Egyptian forces were engaging with the invaders. This gave the impression to the Arabs that Nasser, the new saviour of the Arabs, had driven them out. That this was not the case was proven in 1967 when Israeli forces routed the combined Arab forces and captured Jerusalem (from Jordan), Sinai (from Egypt), West Bank and Gaza strip (from Jordan) and Golan Heights and Sheba Farms (from Syria). With these captured lands Israel grew four times bigger in size compared to its original area. 

With this defeat Arab nationalism lost face, but soon a new generation of Arab leaders, inspired by Nasser’s image, came up: Hafez al-Assad in Syria, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Anwar Sadat in Egypt, Jaffer al-Numeri in Sudan, Benali in Tunisia, besides Ahmad bin Billah in Algeria and some smaller figures in Arabic-speaking lands. Virtually all of them failed and brought great disaster on their countries. This almost buried Arab nationalism and Arab socialism forever. 

Political Islam, too, did greater harm than good. Egypt was politically divided because of it. Some of the extremist Islamists were executed. Others like al-Zawahiri and Omar the blind were exiled. Because of these groups hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed in civil war in post-Soviet Uzbekistan and the government abolished newly announced Islamic freedoms. In Afghanistan, CIA and Pakistan’s ISI trained the Taliban in madrasahs on Af-Pak border. The Taliban chased away and killed an entire generation of Afghanistan’s Islamic fighters, the Mujahideen. Later the West destroyed the Taliban themselves, with ISI help. The caliphate of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killed thousands of Muslims before Khalifa Baghdadi was killed and the “caliphate” largely disintegrated. Before that, the one-eyed Taliban leader, Mullah Omar had declared himself caliph by reportedly appearing in public in the Prophet’s (PBUH) gown. 

Now is the moment for the Ummah to decide what it should do with itself, which course to take, which to avoid. We have seen far too many false dawns, run after far too many false messiahs. In this series of four articles I have pointed briefly at several issues that can be discussed in detail to clarify where we stand today and where we should be headed in days ahead