There is an ongoing battle within Muslim countries as well as one between many Muslims living in western societies and their adopted countries. There is hardly any need to describe the features of this conflict except to point out that while it continues to take a huge toll of lives in countries like Pakistan, it now threatens a reaction against Muslims in the West. In the latter, the horrifying terrorism of a few in the name of Islam now threatens a hostile reaction from racists, hate mongers and ultra-nationalists.
As we see it, at the heart of the problem lie two issues: one a creation of the way we have opted to imagine religion, and the other a creation of the way the dominant West pursues its economic and political interests. The first one may be summarized by noting that the dominant discourse within Muslims is that our religious tradition is a complete solution to all our problems, personal as well as collective. If any conflict arises in any social, political or economic domain, we need to look only so far as our religious heritage, tradition and practices of early Islam to find guidance or solutions. The intellectual developments, social and political constructions, and evolutionary changes in how man looks at himself and society and the whole enigma of existence, that have occurred over the past thousand or more years are, for the most part, are alien ideologies. We deal with these concepts as social necessities and technologies, but without internalizing their precepts. We are outsiders in the intellectual world of our times, and our basic intellectual attitudes often run contrary to the spirit of our age.
The second issue relates to political and social upheavals created by repeated interventions of the developed world. The West continues to pursue its economic and political interests within Muslim societies ruthlessly, cynically and brazenly, at times forming exploitative relationships with our elites and enjoying the benefits of unabashed plunder. Joining hands with tyrants, monarchs and military rulers at one time, and devastating entire countries such as Iraq, Syria and Libya on the pretext of democracy and human rights at other times. The internal struggles for economic betterment, freedom and participatory democracy in Muslim countries has been side tracked, with a large portion of the oppressed classes deeming modernity itself as the enemy and the West as the torch-bearer of modernity, as the principal enemy to be confronted at our own societies home and now increasingly, within the Western world itself. The drive of the West for control over resources, markets and policies in the Muslim world feeds the dogma of religious extremism.
These two issues obviously get interrelated viz how the Muslim street reacts to perceived and real injustices. Before elaborating on that, we note that the drive for domination by the powerful nations is not a unique feature of today’s world; this has been the norm in human societies over the ages. Nor is the exploitation of man by man within a nation state or country anything that is unique to our times. What is unique today is that we are conscious of this exploitation and the affected seek to overturn such a relationship between the stronger and weaker people or nations. What is unfortunate however is the way we as a people, ie Muslims, have chosen to fight and resist these injustices, within and without outside our societies. Unlike other contemporary societies that resisted the oppression of their own elite or of imperial domination, we the Muslims have chosen not to fight with the weapons of reason and collective organization. Instead we have chosen a regressive, reactionary attitude that seeks answers to our political and social plight in theocratic dogma. Hence the call for an Islamic state or Khilafat, or the calls for reverting to a social system that predates modern times.
Our failure to fight the wars of today with the weapons of knowledge and political organization lie in our general attitudes towards human created knowledge and institutions.
Not only for Islamic extremists but even for the average Muslim, there is a sense of alienation with what human society has created over the past at least six or seven hundred years; a refusal to accept the sanctity of manmade concepts, whether it is democracy, or paying tax on one’s income, or stopping one’s vehicle at a red light or of observing the queue. We also fail to appreciate that it is we humans who create knowledge and find reason; it is we who impart meanings to our lives and our relationships and to our social or political institutions.
What has gone on in the intellectual developments of several preceding centuries is a part of our heritage even if we the Muslims have not played any significant role in it. We shun it to our peril. To reject, for example, the rationalism of the Renaissance, or the defiance of the Reformation, or the epochal contributions of giants such as Marx or Darwin or Einstein or Freud and many, many such others is to consign ourselves to an intellectual ghetto. From within this ghetto it is only the likes of Al Qaeda, ISIS and our own Maulana Aziz et al who would emerge as movements or intellectual leaders to defy the violence committed on us by our own and other societies. To ignore the movements for emancipation whether as the French or the Russian Revolutions or the struggle against colonialism, or the Vietnamese struggle against imperialism, or the movements against slavery, apartheid and racism, etc as events irrelevant to our mental and cultural developments is not just to deny our own humanity. It closes the doors to finding paths of resistance, out of the present day morass.
The present-day plight of the Muslims is therefore first and foremost an intellectual plight; the poverty of their reasoning. It is imbedded in our inability to come to terms with the modern world intellectually our unwillingness to accept culture and identity not only as very precious but also as evolving realities. To persist on this course will continue to render us aliens, indeed irrelevant, in the universal human society of today.
The author is an academic and a research scientist based in Islamabad
As we see it, at the heart of the problem lie two issues: one a creation of the way we have opted to imagine religion, and the other a creation of the way the dominant West pursues its economic and political interests. The first one may be summarized by noting that the dominant discourse within Muslims is that our religious tradition is a complete solution to all our problems, personal as well as collective. If any conflict arises in any social, political or economic domain, we need to look only so far as our religious heritage, tradition and practices of early Islam to find guidance or solutions. The intellectual developments, social and political constructions, and evolutionary changes in how man looks at himself and society and the whole enigma of existence, that have occurred over the past thousand or more years are, for the most part, are alien ideologies. We deal with these concepts as social necessities and technologies, but without internalizing their precepts. We are outsiders in the intellectual world of our times, and our basic intellectual attitudes often run contrary to the spirit of our age.
The second issue relates to political and social upheavals created by repeated interventions of the developed world. The West continues to pursue its economic and political interests within Muslim societies ruthlessly, cynically and brazenly, at times forming exploitative relationships with our elites and enjoying the benefits of unabashed plunder. Joining hands with tyrants, monarchs and military rulers at one time, and devastating entire countries such as Iraq, Syria and Libya on the pretext of democracy and human rights at other times. The internal struggles for economic betterment, freedom and participatory democracy in Muslim countries has been side tracked, with a large portion of the oppressed classes deeming modernity itself as the enemy and the West as the torch-bearer of modernity, as the principal enemy to be confronted at our own societies home and now increasingly, within the Western world itself. The drive of the West for control over resources, markets and policies in the Muslim world feeds the dogma of religious extremism.
There is a sense of alienation with the progress made in the last 700 years
These two issues obviously get interrelated viz how the Muslim street reacts to perceived and real injustices. Before elaborating on that, we note that the drive for domination by the powerful nations is not a unique feature of today’s world; this has been the norm in human societies over the ages. Nor is the exploitation of man by man within a nation state or country anything that is unique to our times. What is unique today is that we are conscious of this exploitation and the affected seek to overturn such a relationship between the stronger and weaker people or nations. What is unfortunate however is the way we as a people, ie Muslims, have chosen to fight and resist these injustices, within and without outside our societies. Unlike other contemporary societies that resisted the oppression of their own elite or of imperial domination, we the Muslims have chosen not to fight with the weapons of reason and collective organization. Instead we have chosen a regressive, reactionary attitude that seeks answers to our political and social plight in theocratic dogma. Hence the call for an Islamic state or Khilafat, or the calls for reverting to a social system that predates modern times.
Our failure to fight the wars of today with the weapons of knowledge and political organization lie in our general attitudes towards human created knowledge and institutions.
Not only for Islamic extremists but even for the average Muslim, there is a sense of alienation with what human society has created over the past at least six or seven hundred years; a refusal to accept the sanctity of manmade concepts, whether it is democracy, or paying tax on one’s income, or stopping one’s vehicle at a red light or of observing the queue. We also fail to appreciate that it is we humans who create knowledge and find reason; it is we who impart meanings to our lives and our relationships and to our social or political institutions.
What has gone on in the intellectual developments of several preceding centuries is a part of our heritage even if we the Muslims have not played any significant role in it. We shun it to our peril. To reject, for example, the rationalism of the Renaissance, or the defiance of the Reformation, or the epochal contributions of giants such as Marx or Darwin or Einstein or Freud and many, many such others is to consign ourselves to an intellectual ghetto. From within this ghetto it is only the likes of Al Qaeda, ISIS and our own Maulana Aziz et al who would emerge as movements or intellectual leaders to defy the violence committed on us by our own and other societies. To ignore the movements for emancipation whether as the French or the Russian Revolutions or the struggle against colonialism, or the Vietnamese struggle against imperialism, or the movements against slavery, apartheid and racism, etc as events irrelevant to our mental and cultural developments is not just to deny our own humanity. It closes the doors to finding paths of resistance, out of the present day morass.
The present-day plight of the Muslims is therefore first and foremost an intellectual plight; the poverty of their reasoning. It is imbedded in our inability to come to terms with the modern world intellectually our unwillingness to accept culture and identity not only as very precious but also as evolving realities. To persist on this course will continue to render us aliens, indeed irrelevant, in the universal human society of today.
The author is an academic and a research scientist based in Islamabad