Egypt: Learning the Right Lessons

EGYPT: LEARNING THE RIGHT LESSONS

Maryam Sakeenah

The obvious conclusion from Egypt is that political Islam’s ‘concordat’ with democracy has proven a failed experiment. As predicted by Essam Haddad, ‘the message will resonate throughout the Muslim world that democracy is not for Muslims.’ The message has in fact been enthusiastically taken up, with Islamists saying ‘we told you so.’ An article on one such website states, ‘recent experience in Egypt has once again exposed the reality of ‘democracy’ and the true face of democracy- worshippers... democracy isn’t meant for us Muslims.’ The few willing to undertake a deeper and more insightful analysis of the dynamics of political Islam as unfolded in Egypt and the greater Middle East are led to conclude that the problem is not democracy but the lack thereof.

The problem is with the deeply entrenched secular elite and the powerful civil-military bureaucracy in the Muslim world that has persistently obstructed the transition to democracy in order to perpetuate the status quo that sustains them. The problem is with the regressive mindset of these so-called liberals whose lust for power and influence holds democracy hostage as they pay conventional lip service to it, to dupe gullible masses; who laugh the symbolism of the ballot to scorn, not willing to see through a fledgling democratic regime for its mandated time. The problem is with these blue eyed boys of Western powers- that hold a nascent democracy under the thumb; the problem is with the double standards of Western torchbearers of democracy complicit in the brutal travesty of democracy in Egypt; who shamelessly use democracy as a buzzword to legitimize governments servile to the diktat coming from on high; and to delegitimize those that are not amenable to functioning as instruments to safeguard their interests. The problem is with using the pretense of commitment to democracy to disguise a unilateralist pursuit of political and geostrategic interests in the region. The problem is with refusing to call a coup by its name so that the new post-Morsi administration installed by the military could continue to receive assistance from Western nations so as to guarantee and promote the interests of the players of the global Great Game for power.

The heart of the matter and the bitterest lesson is what Patrick Galey has said in ‘The Day the Revolution Died’: ““I’ve learned a basic and terrifying truth today: That many would rather see a military junta rule with impunity and autocracy than see a democratic administration govern with fecklessness and error. That many people who call themselves revolutionaries and advocates of democracy simply hate Islamism more than they love freedom. That people are fully prepared to welcome the army back to political life, with a cheer, two fingers up to those killed since 2011, and a good riddance to Egypt’s first experiment with democracy.”

The right lesson to learn is that the still embryonic democratic culture in the Middle East is to be defended against the illiberal, valueless secular elites and powerful civil-military bureaucracies that pay lip service to democracy while vying for the maintenance of their own power and influence with blessings of their foreign mentors. That is why the coup in Egypt is to be rejected and opposed.

The right lesson for societies in transition is to create infrastructure salubrious for democratic values and practices to take root. Democratization of polities is long, arduous and painstaking. Egypt may be going through the birthpangs of it, but for democracy not to perish in the throes of its birth, it must not be understood as and confined to a balloting exercise. State institutions must respectfully stand by to see it through. Democratic institutions need to tame down and cut to size emboldened militaries with a history of political intervention and influence. Morsi’s greatest failure was in not being able to create constitutional checks and balances against the unwarranted interference of Egypt’s powerful secular military, and in his ineffective dealing with a variegated and vociferous opposition. Without such measures to let democracy take root, it will remain on life support with the ever-present threat of the military boot’s heavy tread stomping the life out of it. The right lesson is not less but more democratization- social, economic and political- from the grassroots so that the balloting exercise has more meaning and the legitimacy of the results it yields, commands respect.

The consequences for political Islam have been graver still. The Egyptian experiment is a significant let-down for the moderate voice that had reconciled Islam with democratic practice and had quite monumentally eked out a way for Islamic regimes to function in a secular-democratic milieu. It lends strength to the more simplistic thesis easier to draw and hence enthusiastically embraced by the Islamist: Democracy is the system of the unbeliever. Through its double standards and complicity with the brutal military that ousted Egypt’s democratic government, the West has ignored this far-reaching consequence to its own peril.

But as we resent the hijacking of the popularly voted Morsi regime in Egypt, we cannot bury our head in the sand when it comes to Morsi’s fatal mistakes- his all-too-frequent fumbling and blundering that showed a complete lack of vision and foresight, or even an understanding of the complex issues he confronted. It was not just ineptitude but spineless, dim-witted lack of political acumen displayed by the Muslim Brotherhood in both its advisory and decision making roles. Given the fact that the Brotherhood is the most well-organized Islamic political group with decades of struggle behind it, raises an important concern about the development of seasoned, visionary and pragmatic leadership in the Muslim world. The vital lesson most pressing in its gravity and urgency is to develop a comprehensive strategy and make a Herculean effort to chisel such leadership that possesses fidelity to faith and yet is conversant with modernity, and is poised for mediating between the polarized extremes in Muslim societies. Iqbal wrote: ‘sabaq phir parh sadaqat ka, adalat ka, shujaat ka / liya jaye ga tujh se kaam dunya ki imamat ka’ (learn your lessons in integrity, justice and courage; and you shall be chosen to lead the world) Islamic organizations throughout the length and breadth of the Muslim world must unifocally devote themselves towards this end.

Events in Egypt also expose the juvenile euphoria over the Arab Spring and the ‘revolution’ in Egypt. The thrilling, glamorous buzzword has been opportunistically taken up by the interim regime to describe the popular movement that called for the ouster of the Morsi regime by the army under the approving eyes of foreign actors pulling the strings. Students of history are aware that revolutions, while exciting, electrifying and spectacular are also bloodstained and often in vain, seldom yielding enduring change. The French revolution was trailed by the Reign of Terror, and the Russian revolution dwindled into the dictatorship of Stalin. Lasting change follows a bottom-up trend, rising from the grassroots. It is engendered through gradual and consistent evolutionary process. Gradualism is an important insight employed by the Quranic method of social reform. Groups believing in and calling for revolutionary change to install Islamist regimes which will- needless to say- involve clash, blood and gore, are terribly misguided. Such a revolutionary change will rest upon feet of clay. Those looking all starry- eyed for revolutionary Islamist upheaval must drop off the ‘r’ to rediscover the more enduring and profound scope of gradual, evolutionary, phased reform.

A fundamental, vital lesson less noticed and talked about is that the polarization of Muslim societies into the religious and the secular is an open-mouthed Hydra waiting in the wings ominously. This is likely to create wide and irreparable rifts that will threaten social stability and solidarity and flare up in times of crisis into clash and confrontation. Few in the Muslim world however have deciphered this writing on the wall. Egypt’s political showdown stems from its deeper ideological crisis gnawing into the roots of its body-politic. Conflicting aspirations of the secular and the religious, exacerbated by the Salafi extreme with its rigidly conservative agenda and its rejection of Brotherhood rule lending strength to the secularist-dominated opposition made the country virtually ungovernable and the weak leadership caved in. This ideological rift running threateningly like a tectonic faultline through society posed a formidable challenge to democracy, making the achievement of a consensus over just about everything, impossible to reach.

Muslim scholars and leaders are not cognizant of the danger this poses, and in a desperate, sincere but ill advised attempt to ‘defend’ Islam from the assault of the powerful secular-liberal lobby, become more insular and exclusivist. This leads to ghettoization and reinforces, aggravates and intensifies the polarization. It results in two embattled ideologically opposed camps with strong in-group solidarity and out-group hostility. This is the much-speculated ‘war within Islam’ we have often heard mentioned by neoconservatists. Islamists must realize that given the resourcefulness of their opposition and the backing and support from powerful Western allies, such a clash will be hard, long-drawn and ugly. They must learn that by being on the defensive and ghettoizing, they bring the clash closer, lend strength to the polarization and at the end of the day the Leviathan monster unleashed is going to swallow us all up, indiscriminately.

The right lesson for Islamic leaders is to recognize this danger and actively work to prevent such an eventuality through education and dissemination of ideas that do not deepen the rifts but reach out by speaking in a universal, inclusivist voice that is essentially the ethos of Islam. They must work to engender a consciousness that is rooted in faith and guided by common values, ready to take the plunge into the abyss that stares us in the face; ready to take up the grand project for social reform by infiltrating into the rank and file of a stratified, broken society- and not under narrow parochial labels and confining banners of ‘Islamic’ or otherwise. And this is not to be misunderstood as lack of fidelity to the faith. This will bring the additional advantage of the struggle for Islam becoming more discreet and elusive in the wake of rising hostility and even active opposition to and persecution of identifiable Islamists- in the process taking the struggle out of ghettos into the wider society, waging it at all levels.

Organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood would be well advised to hold off the political struggle and prioritize the bigger social project which requires an all-embracing, universalistic approach that is less exclusivist and less essentialist. This will bear upon education and the media, creating leadership for the wider community, the academy, the media, courts of law and the civil-military bureaucracy. The political struggle- not needing to be called by a label, can then be erected on surer footing, a more secure and deep-rooted social foundation grounded in an ideological framework that is inclusive and all-embracing, visionary and pragmatic, faithful to its religio-cultural roots and yet confidently forward-looking and willing to engage.   

And at the end of the day it all boils down to what lessons we choose to learn from Egypt.

On the Woolwich Incident and responses to it...

RECLAIMING THE JIHAD: A RESPONSE TO TAREK FATAH

Maryam Sakeenah

To condemn the Woolwich incident, spine-chilling and disgusting as it may be_ is pointless. Not because it may by any stretch of imagination be justified, but because the haste and anxiety with which this is so promptly done both by spokespeople of Western nations and by Muslim leaders denotes the uncritical acceptance of the predominant narrative on terrorism on the terms of the powerbrokers and the media that tell us who to condemn, how and how much. It is also inadequate to only condemn these instances when they occur while failing to understand and take on the deeper dynamics that set them off. For, terrorism and the usage of the term are far more nuanced than these facile proclamations make us believe.

While Tarek Fatah has rightly pointed out this inadequacy in his article ‘UK Beheading Shows It’s Time to Fight the Doctrine of Jihad’, and reminded Muslims of the need to take on such criminal elements within their ranks, the rest of the article teeters on presumptions that are ignorant at best and dangerous a worst: ignorant because of a complete inability to understand the ground realities of contemporary international politics and dangerous for the ideologization of terrorism that lends credence to the idea that Islam is inherently violent and Muslims inherently predisposed towards violence.

The writer makes the same error many neoconservatives calling for a ‘War on Terror’ made, with disastrous consequences: accepting the motives and objectives of terrorism as interpreted and explained by American rhetoric. He tells us that such elements wish to ‘sow fear into the soul of British people’ and are ideologically motivated ‘by one powerful belief of the doctrine of Jihad against the kuffar...’ Readers are asked to make some leaps of faith here as this denies any possibility that such dastardly acts may be a crazed protest out of desperation and frustration, driven by vengeance over what is seen to be unfair and brutal, such as unfair occupations, drone strikes and brutal torture in illegal detention camps. By ideologizing the motives, attention is deflected away from the policies that provoke extreme and desperate reaction. Moral culpability is ruled out and the inaccurate and dangerous idea that the problem is with the ideology believed in by these people is given credence. Hence an image is conjured up of a clash between Islam and the West: a false and pernicious idea that makes the world madly careen towards a clash of civilizations.

The fallacy of the premise of this ideologization of terrorism and whose interests it serves, need to be exposed. Terrorism, in fact, is a tactic used by disaffected individuals and communities, not an ideology. It is not inspired by a hatred of all that the West stands for, but is a reaction to policy and actions of Western nations. Michael Scheuer states: “There is no record of a Muslim urging to wage jihad to destroy democracy or credit unions, or universities. What the US does in formulating and implementing policies affecting the Muslim world is infinitely more inflammatory.” The smokescreen of rhetoric, however, keeps a dispassionate analysis of the real grievances that fire such acts at bay.

Fatah goes on to state that Muslim terrorists have been ‘emboldened’ by the West’s ‘passivity’ towards terrorism, implying that Western nations are victims too infirm to take on the horrifying, audacious enemy consolidating its ranks in the wings. There clearly is in this a criminal oversight of the glaring and undeniable reality that wars, occupations, kidnappings, tortures, detentions have been carried out by Western nations on the pretext of pre-empting and countering terrorism; that Guantanamo still detains thousands without charge, that only 2% out of the many thousands killed in drone operations against terrorists have any suspicion against them.

While what happened at Woolwich was grotesquely inhuman, refusing to acknowledge similar grotesque wrongs at the hands of powerful occupying armies in other parts of the world is diabolical. While Woolwich is unjustifiable, one cannot lose sight of the connection between the actions of armies abroad and the psychology of vengeance. In all honesty, one may also be reminded of the fact that barely weeks ago an unarmed seventy-five year old was similarly hacked and butchered to death in Birmingham while on his way home. The reason no one heard of it was because the victim being a Muslim on his way back from the local mosque made the story not newsworthy enough. Islamist terror is the in-thing- other acts of violence and terrorism are relegated to individual criminality or insanity.

The writer reminds us that the tactics used by the Woolwich attackers were ‘straight from medieval times’, recklessly making a direct link with Islamic doctrine and tradition. Anyone with a basic understanding of terrorism would know that desperate tactics like this one are used when the might of perceived enemies is too great and invincible, defying conventional tactics. Reading more than that into it and connecting it to medieval Islamic doctrine is grossly irresponsible for the devastating social and inter-subjective consequences in an atmosphere of great prejudice and hostility against Muslims and Islam. The UK Muslim community is already targeted for hate-speech by white supremacist groups like the English Defence League, and Mr. Fatah’s proclamations serve to keep this atmosphere of hate and suspicion charged.

It is vital and urgent that Muslims take responsibility for such elements and tendencies within their community and the writer did well to highlight this, but to interject ‘Islam is the enemy!’ when the religion and its practitioners already stand much stereotyped and pigeonholed, misunderstood, mistrusted and maligned is highly irresponsible and reckless.

However, such reform has to come from within the Muslim community from authentic representatives and spokespeople of Islamic tradition. The gusto for ‘fixing Islam’ from the West is misplaced, insincere, uninsightful and comes loaded with malafide agendas and political interests.  Tarek Fatah’s exhortation to Western leaders to take on the Jihadic ideology and defeat it, is fatal nonsense.

Having said that, Fatah’s disappointment with liberal Muslims rubbing in the fact that ‘Islam is Peace’ and keeping mum about the doctrine of physical Jihad as part of Islam, is valid- but for different reasons. Liberal Muslims desperately try to deny and eclipse this aspect of Islam and in so doing, implicitly accept the ignorant allegation that physical Jihad is a violent doctrine. Mr. Tarek Fatah too shares this inability to understand and appreciate the concept of Jihad with its contemporary ramifications in a holistic and insightful manner. This explains his enthusiastic call for rejecting Jihad altogether, and his great disappointment that Islamic scholars are not too excited about jettisoning the murderous idea once and for all.

Liberal Muslims often either deny or denigrate Jihad, as if it was an embarrassment. Jihad, standing for struggle spanning all means to resist injustice, evil and falsehood is to safeguard and protect the sanctity of human life, not to violate it. It aims at protecting the weak, the suffering and the sinned-against. Jihad purged the concept of war from excesses. The first Quranic exhortation to fight came with the emphasis to ‘be not aggressive.’

The Quran and the example of the Sunnah clearly and categorically lay down the conditions when Jihad should be resorted to. Simply, all is not fair in war, and rulings for protecting non combatants and those not directly engaged in confrontation are explicit. Besides, its objectives are clearly laid down: it is neither for territorial aggrandizement nor national power nor spreading the faith, but for resisting oppression and injustice and helping in the establishment of a just and peaceful social order. Fatah makes an ignorant and misleading connection between the senseless butchery at Woolwich and the concept of Jihad: the same criminal mistake that the perpetrators themselves made.

Mr. Fatah makes a pathetic attempt to validate his claim that Jihad is a savage expansionist ideology by quoting an inaccurate and false definition of Jihad from A Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam which makes the unforgivable error or defining Jihad as ‘the spread of Islam by arms’, a claim unsubstantiated by any Islamic text or source of authority.

The need of the hour, contrary to Mr. Fatah’s prescription, is to rediscover and elucidate the concept of Jihad in contemporary context and expose its distortion, misperception and abuse by those hostile to Jihad as well as those claiming to wage it. The silence on this from Muslim scholars leaves the misconceptions and confusions to proliferate and hence provide justification to fringe extremist and criminal elements like those who carried out the brutal display at Woolwich in the name of Jihad.

This said, Mr. Fatah needs to be reminded that resistance to wrong and defence of the weak and marginalized against oppression and injustice is a basic virtue attested to by all spiritual and moral doctrines, hence the Jihadic philosophy is not an invention of Islam even though it may be a culmination of this universal idea. Stripping Islam off this beautiful crowning glory is a preposterous and revolting idea he can never find any support for. Both Mr. Fatah and his ilk as well as sheepish Liberal Muslims need to be reminded of the fact that Islam extols and idealizes peace but also accepts the idea that when the rhetoric and pretense of peace hides the demons of injustice, it must be exposed and rejected and resisted. Farid Esack writes, “When peace comes to mean the absence of conflict on the one hand and when conflict with an unjust political order is a moral imperative on the other, then it is not difficult to understand that the better class of human beings will be deeply committed to disturbing the peace and creating conflict.”

What is important to realize, however, is that in the absence of this understanding of Jihad and the spineless, fragmented state of the Muslim world, resistance to the great wrongs by Western nations at present is febrile, maniacal and as vicious as the actions of the powerful perpetrators. Yeats lamented, ‘the best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.’  Esack writes, ‘The problem with Muslim fundamentalism is that it is as totalitarian and exclusivist as the order that it seeks to displace. It seeks to create an order wherein they are the sole spokespersons for a rather vengeful, patriarchal and chauvinistic God.’ That is a judicious and vital understanding we as Muslims must acquire in order to reclaim the Jihad for our time.  

Incidents like Woolwich as well as the great wrongs that engender such sickness: stemming from both Western policy as well as Muslim degeneracy- are to be rejected and actively opposed. The underlying logic of wars of powerful Western nations against “terrorism" and terrorist attacks provoking or provoked by them is the same: both punish human beings for the actions of their governments or of individuals or groups sharing religious or ethnic identity. We are left with an important question: If terrorism is the direct and intentional killing of innocent people with the purpose for achieving a greater goal they are not directly linked with, are not both terrorism? While we correctly acknowledge Woolwich as savage terrorism, why are similar instances in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen or Iraq also not recognized as equally unacceptable, intensely provocative and deeply damaging? As long as contemporary politics continue to operate on the premise of ‘some are more equal that others’, such ugly outrages will keep happening at the hands of the psychologically vulnerable. The need is an all-out struggle- a progressive ‘Jihad’ if you will- against all wrongs that fuel the vicious cycle, regardless of who the perpetrators may be.

The Stasis of the Muslim Mind

THE STASIS OF THE MUSLIM MIND

Maryam Sakeenah

“Lost in the loneliness, we turn inwards- with a knife in our hands and a lump in our throats”, writes Muhammad Fadel describing the deep crisis in contemporary Muslim consciousness. The loss of the Khilafah has imbued Muslim sensibility with a deep and haunting nostalgia for a bygone glory. The direction of foreign policy taken by Western nations vis a vis the Muslim world has not helped assuage the raw sentiment, leaving Muslims to harbour the supposition that the ascendant West is locked in a crusade against the Muslim world in the throes of despondency imposed by a malevolent external enemy. The frustration this engenders often makes itself felt in spasmodic bouts of violence like the gasps of an etherized patient laid across on the table.

The experience of long-drawn colonial rule across Muslim lands intensified the nostalgic longing for a lost glory as well as the need to hold on ever more strongly and exclusively to religious fundamentals as a means of self-preservation and protection of religio-cultural identity. This exacerbated the disconnect between ‘deen’ and ‘dunya’ in Muslim consciousness in general and education in particular. Aurangzeb Haneef notes in his article, ‘Learning from the Past’, that one of the most important effects of European imperialism in Muslim society was that the pursuit of rational sciences (maqulat) was abandoned in favour of transmitted sciences (manqulat)in the spirit of preservation in an attempt to re-center and standardize the traditions of religious knowledge. Madrassas ceased to be the training grounds for the intellectual and cultural elite and increasingly came to be identified with religious education only, which was an aberration from the tradition.

The rising popularity of Salafism is a reactionary response out of a prevailing sense of defeatism, victimhood, vulnerability and insecurity over what is seen as the encroachment upon Muslim identity and culture by an ascendant Western civilization. The call for a puritanical ‘return to the sources’ down to the letter shunning the accretions of theology and jurisprudence over centuries is distressingly ahistorical, uncreative and mimetic. It refuses to recognize the need to creatively and rationally respond to the exigencies of the times. Ironically while it claims fidelity to authentic Muslim tradition, it actually betrays the essential dynamism of the same. This dynamism is the defining trait of Islamic jurisprudence which traditionally accorded space to diversity. Muslim jurists were remarkably tolerant of ‘ikhtilaf’(difference of opinion), and were adept at the ‘adab’ (etiquettes) of ikhtilaf. Towering jurists of the sunni school like Imam Abu Hanifa and Imam Malik discouraged blind following (taqleed) of their opinions, encouraging critical thinking and research.

These Muslim groups demonstrate all or most of the traits of fundamentalism, that is: ‘a sense of chosenness tied to the demonizing or damnation of all others who refuse to get behind the truth subscribed to by the subject himself.’ (Farid Esack) By refusing to defer to historical understandings of Islam in theology and law, these Muslim groups place themselves at the fringes of Islamic tradition they claim to be guardians and restorers of.

Due to a radical subjectivism that confers quasi-divine authority to a certain set of literalist opinions these innovation-resistant groups refuse to subject their opinions to rational inquiry. In so doing, they implicitly refuse to recognize intrinsic human diversity as well as the status of individuals as rational subjects imbued with the Divinely-bestowed gift of intellect and free will. “Unto every one of you have We appointed a [different] law and way of life. And if God had so willed, He could surely have made you all one single community: but [He willed it otherwise] in order to test you by means of what He has vouchsafed unto, you. Vie, then, with one another in doing good works! Unto God you all must return; and then He will make you truly understand all that on which you were wont to differ.” (5:48)

At a subconscious level, the deep realization of the untenability of opinions that refuse to defer to critical examination has resulted in an inward-looking stasis characterized by an uncompromising exclusivism and exceptionalism.

Muslim exceptionalism betrays the Quran’s universal embrace of humanity with its consistent appeal to mankind as the creation of God, a single family. ‘O men! Behold, We have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him. Behold, God is all knowing, all aware.” (49:13) The Quran attaches sanctity to all humankind when it narrates how God blew of His own spirit into the first created person. Muslim exclusivism refuses to recognize the fact that our well-being as a species on a finite planet is tied to the well-being of all others we share it with, and that in the face of this reality, all labels and artificial boundaries are secondary. It is only the extremely narrow-minded and short-sighted who would refuse to recognize the fact that our well being is inextricably tied to the well being of all others.

A further corollary of such exclusivism is the tendency to view ideas as mutually exclusive, with an either/or approach. The middle ground, the many grey areas of overlap are lost sight of. This generates a characteristic intellectual extremism that infects Muslims en masse. It is not understood that neither of the extremes is an acceptable alternative to the other, hence the world appears all black and white, like an arena for a clash of ideas. The ‘Us versus Them’ psyche translates into ‘Islam versus The West.’ This is dangerous as it understands both Islam and the West as monoliths and glosses over the many instances both historical and contemporary, of coexistence, intercultural exchange, common grounds and shared values. It denies the universality of commonly held values, viewing them as ‘Western’ or ‘Islamic.’ The actual confrontation as recognized by Islam, is between Haqq and Baatil (Truth versus Falsehood), and before deciding if anything that passes for Islam is the whole truth, we need to ask ‘whose Islam?’, given the fact that the Quran and sunnah are open to diverse readings and interpretations and the self-appointed spokespeople of Islam are as many as the possible interpretations. Nor is Falsehood equivalent to all that the West is about, given the fact that the military-industrial complex and the clique of influential policy-making elites are responsible for the highhandedness of foreign policy decisions and the injustices that have wreaked havoc and provoked backlash among Muslim populations.

Muslims often invoke the ideal of Islam comparing it to the reality of Western society which often betrays its own values such as freedom and liberty, to show the degeneracy of the latter as compared to the Divine system they have been denied- unmindful of the many ways Muslim societies consistently betray the values of Islam.  

The myth of ‘Islam versus the West’ also denies the collective heritage of Islamic and European civilizations and the instrumental role Islam had in making the Enlightenment possible. “Arab science altered medieval Christendom beyond recognition. For the first time in centuries, Europe’s eyes opened to the world around it- Arab science and philosophy helped rescue the Christian world from ignorance and made possible the very idea of the ‘West.’” (Jonathan Lyons, ‘House of Wisdom’) Aime Cesaire beautifully and powerfully reminds us of this collective human heritage and that attempts to claim a monopoly over the achievements of human civilization are a form of intellectual dishonesty, whether done by scholars in the West or the Muslim world. "But the work of man is only just beginning, and it remains to conquer all the violence entrenched in the recesses of our passion, for no race possesses the monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of force. And there is a place for all at the rendezvous of victory." - Aimé Césaire 

In the same vein, there are other binaries like ‘Islam versus Democracy.’ In the recent Pakistan elections numerous religious groups propagated that casting a vote was an act of ‘kufr,’ because democracy is based on the sovereignty of the masses over the sovereignty of God. While the system of electoral politics in Western societies has elements that are incompatible with Islam, the values of democracy are universal and are part and parcel of Islamic governance. Following the majority opinion a standardized practice in Muslim tradition (‘Ijma’ has many forms, the last of which sanctions general voting by the public to settle questions that bear upon the interests of the general masses and can be put to a public vote). Moreover, respecting popular sentiment and being accountable to the public are fundamental Islamic political values. The procedural rules of electoral politics can and should be reformed to conform to Islamic standards and shari’ rulings made exclusively the job of a panel of qualified ulema, beyond the purview of general voting- and it no more is ‘an affront to God’s sovereignty.’ Numberless Islamic scholars have talked of the compatibility between democratic principles and Islamic politics. Sameen Sadaf notes the irony in ‘The Dynamism of Islam”: The alternative, they say, is ‘Khilafat’ (which in many ways is democratic in its ethos). However, since there is no comprehensive system and candidature for khilafat at the time, one can suppose that all we can do is wait for a savior while the forces of actual ‘Kufr’ take over and ruin us.” Pro-Sharia activists seem to assume that mainstreaming the Islamic way of life through dialogue and dawah can be discounted without any loss and they can march straight to an Islamic Khilafah state that will somehow miraculously tame the Muslim masses into believing slaves of God. 

The binary thinking pattern and exclusivism has made Muslim consciousness be preoccupied with narrow, parochial concerns considered ‘Islamic.’ It is forgotten that being slaves of Allah means being good human beings first and that as Muslims everything in the universe is our business. Zaid Hassan writes of the need to ‘reclaim our relationship to the whole’ in his wonderful article, ‘Notes towards an Incomplete Manifesto for Liberating the Muslim Mind.’ The growing distance between ‘deen’ and ‘dunya’ in Muslim consciousness has made Muslims unconcerned about aspects that belong to the secular domain as profane and unworthy. Hence there is an intellectual degeneracy, and a clear absence of contemporary Muslim discourse in science, philosophy and the humanities, a near-absence of Muslim contribution to research.  In the recent elections, Islamic parties in Pakistan exclusively talked of the need for a return to rule by Islam, invoking Shariah, the Islamic identity and ethos of Pakistan. Talking of issues that resonate with the masses like poverty or the energy crisis was considered redundant given their ‘Islamic’ credentials. The growing unpopularity of these parties and their less-than-expected performance comes as no surprise.  

This ghettoization of Muslim thought threatens to make us dwindle into a cult at the margins of civilization. Religious discourse that fails to take account of the modern mind and appeal to the youth with their voracity for rational argument cannot be shoved down people’s throats. It is condemned to survive as no more than a fringe-cult.  

Still more lamentable is the fact that Muslims are failing to realize the need to introspect in these critical times. Any manifestation of the deep crisis in Muslim consciousness is dismissed as ‘unrepresentative of Islam’ at best, and ‘propaganda against Islam’ at worst. Self-criticism is noble, highly needful and the essential trait of the faithful. Muslims have abandoned it altogether, and any voice helping us to examine ourselves critically or calling for a reform is disdainfully rejected with suspicion and sneering self-righteousness. The belief that terrorists or criminals or misogynists ‘use’ the name of Islam to justify their deeds is comforting but unhelpful because it does not recognize the fact that many interpretations of the Quran and sunnah actually give some grounds to sanction such acts and that therefore there is great responsibility on Muslim thinkers to expose and oppose the textual basis of such arguments.

The stasis of the Muslim mind is a daunting project before us. Muslim society is terribly fragmented and polarized between the extremes of the secular and the religious. So much of Muslim scholarship today is pitiably out of touch with the vicissitudes of contemporary society, rationally indefensible, in a language far removed from and inaccessible to the mass man and incognizant of the psychology of modernity and post-modernity. ‘Maqulat’ must be brought at par with the ‘Manqulat’ as central to a holistic Muslim education, precisely because that is how it had always been and was supposed to be before things went awry. The need today is for Muslim scholars to negotiate between entrenched extreme positions, address issues of the here and now in a language that appeals to the common man, and to appeal to modern sensibility in a manner that is faithful to the ethos of Islamic tradition. Such voices need to collate, organize and rise to a crescendo that can drown out the clamour of extremisms. It is a grand project and an urgent one, but cannot be begun until we first realize the need for such effort today and cease to live in denial of the terrible crisis that threatens to rob our faith of its very soul and reduce it to perpetual irrelevance.