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<< Understandably, while there are
problems within the respective trajectories such as Westernized
modernity and politicized Islam, there is urgency for promoting a
reconstructive debate, which could steer Muslim peoples towards a
better understanding, peace and progress.
......some of the Iraqi and even Iranian ulema have
begun to suggest a rethink on separation
of religion from state. They are not suggesting a complete
banishment of religion from political discourse but are being
increasingly critical of its routine exploitation by political
authorities for persona list or dynastic gains.
They are even using the terms such as Muslim secularism more boldly
though such a discourse is ironically happening only
after the Anglo-American decimation of a Muslim region and which
also remains occupied. ...Coming from the ulema in Najaf, Karbala,
Baghdad or even Qum, such a quest is certainly nascent yet
amazingly positive.
In an interview in Baghdad, Sayyid Iyad Jamaleddine, an eminent Shia
leader ...candidly observed: "We want a secular constitution.
That is the most important point. If we write a secular
constitution and separate religion from state, that would be the end
of despotism and it would liberate religion as well as the human
being. The Islamic religion has been hijacked for 14 centuries by
the hands of the state"...
." ..One may add that it is not just the political
authority that has misused and abused Islam as a
legitimiser, the religious authority has been equally responsible
for mayhem after mayhem of ordinary believers. Millions of innocent
Muslims have laid their lives in all these centuries thanks to
obscurantist fatwas and uncalled-for exhortation to Jihad, of which
many have been against
fellow Muslims.
...The humanist reinterpretation of Islam and likewise of secularism
can surely deliver Muslims from this continued monopolist
exploitation by the political and religious authoritarianism,
and also augur an overdue Islamic renaissance.
...It may also offer a unique alternative to an abrasive modernity
in the West itself locked in collective violence perpetrated through
institutional racism and unilateralist militarism....
...Very few people may know that the Muslim metropolitan centres
such as Constantinople, Delhi, Lahore and Baghdad stayed Muslim
minority cities even under the Muslim rule, which reveals an amazing
level of tolerance and co-existence at a time when most of the
world suffered from inquisitions and pogroms.... the
practice of a humanist secularism as an exploitation-free,
egalitarian and forward looking system-both in politics and
education-falls in line with the Islamic heritage spreading over
centuries.
...A hasty rejection of secularism, despite its various pitfalls as
a western construct or a modernist edifice, may not be a fair
way to judge its merits. Muslim secularism is a possibility in the
near future, as it has been a historic Muslim experience in the past
and is not an alien proposition. It may prove a death knoll to the
vast disempowerment and continued exploitation of Muslim masses both
by the sultans and scholars.
That is where intellectuals such as Syed Ahmed Khan, Muhammad Abduh,
Muhammad
Iqbal, Fazlur Rahman, Ali Shariati, Abdul Karim Surush, Asghar Ali
Engineer and some Shia clerics in Iraq become more persuasive.
>> --- the Author
Islam and
secularism: odd couple or partners?
By Dr Iftikhar H. Malik
(Article writen in 2003)
courtesy: Kalim Irfani
Europeanization of the world since the 15th century is a mixed but
significantly painful human experience and that is why there has
been so much skepticism of the whole idea of progress. Interpreting
contemporary conflicts simply as clash of cultures or contestation
between modernity and tradition is already simplistic. For
instance, as suggested by Edward Said and more recently by John
Gray, Political Islam - or whatever one may call it - is, to a large
extent, rooted in modernity and is not an entirely traditional
assertion.
Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, Oriana Fallaci, Ann Coulter and several
proponents of westernized modernity, along with the other
neo-conservatives, are not being correct in presenting Islam as a
traditional monolith, arraigned against a modernist, value-based
West. To Bush-Blair duo and their ideological cohorts Islam may have
to be retrieved from its medieval time warp through an altruist
crusade. In the same manner, several Islamicists seek West
and the Rest lost in jahliya (ignorance) waiting to be
retrieved by the turbaned and bearded Mujahideen.
Within the context of this heated controversy, interestingly, some
Muslim ulema, instead of an outright dismissal of secularism, have
quietly begun to debate the possible interface between Islam and
secularism rather than viewing them as eternal foes. However, the
quest is still in infancy and like several mundane scholars the
effort is in its embryonic stage understandably due to statist and
societal rejectionism of secularism and of any reconstructive
discourse on Islam.
This self-questioning exhibits a growing disgust with the hijacking
of both religion and political authority by nefarious elements at
the expense of societal prerogatives. While Islamicists may seek
Muslim predicament, among other factors, in the absence of Islamic
law in the Muslim states, the fact remains that even the
confessional states with professed Islamic order such as Saudi
Arabia, Iran, Pakistan or Taleban's Afghanistan have consistently
failed to improve upon
participatory and accountable systems.
Islam, in many of these states, simply came to be used as a legitimize
for sheer authoritarian, anachronistic systems and discretionary
policies. Retrospectively, it will be safe to suggest
that the selective and penal use of Islam by these states not only
exacerbated the public anguish but also worsened human rights in
those societies. The contradictions - thanks to this partisan
intermingling of religion and politics- are more obvious if one
looks at the state of minorities in these states along with a clear
deterioration in the status of women.
The so-called westernized elite in the post-independence decades
have only kow-towed to the external backers while concurrently
denying basic rights to their own people. The religio-political
elements within the governments and outside have equally repressed
civic rights and their bombastic rhetoric has only exacerbated
sectarian and inter-ethnic violence. Interestingly, both of them
have often used the West, neighbors and even modernity as convenient
foes, not
out of some genuine conviction but simply for selective expediency.
Understandably, while there are problems within the respective
trajectories such as Westernised modernity and politicised Islam,
there is urgency for promoting a reconstructive debate, which could
steer Muslim peoples towards a better understanding, peace and
progress. Lately, unlike their other counterparts, some of the Iraqi
and even Iranian ulema have begun to suggest a rethink on separation
of religion from state. They are not suggesting a complete
banishment
of religion from political discourse but are being increasingly
critical of its routine exploitation by political authorities for persona list
or dynastic gains.
They are even using the terms such as Muslim secularism more boldly
though such a discourse is ironically happening only
after the Anglo-American decimation of a Muslim region and which
also remains occupied. A similar debate is still not openly possible
in any other Muslim state. Coming from the ulema in Najaf, Karbala,
Baghdad or even Qum, such a quest is certainly nascent yet amazingly
positive.
In an interview in Baghdad, Sayyid Iyad Jamaleddine, an eminent Shia
leader and the mentor of Sayyid Hussein Khomeini, the grandson of
the late Imam Khomeini, candidly observed: "We want a secular
constitution. That is the most important point. If we write a
secular constitution and separate religion from state, that would be
the end of despotism and it would liberate religion as well as
the human being. The Islamic religion has been hijacked for 14
centuries by the hands of the state". (International
Herald Tribune, 11 August 2003)
One may add that it is not just the political authority that has
misused and abused Islam as a legitimiser, the religious authority
has been equally responsible for mayhem after mayhem of ordinary
believers. Millions of innocent Muslims have laid their lives in all
these centuries thanks to obscurantist fatwas and uncalled-for
exhortation to Jihad, of which many have been against fellow
Muslims.
The more recent examples are of General Zia's Pakistan where Muslim
minorities paid a huge price to a growing Sunni majoritarianism.
According to the common parlance in Pakistan, the Mullah + Military
axis is the bane of most of the sectarian and anti-women violence.
The promotion of Jihadist elements in the 1980s and a nod from
Washington and elsewhere has resulted into a whole plethora of
outfits pursuing several hazy ideas across the region.
In the neighbouring Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia, Islam
remains a tool both for regimes and the Mullahs to extract maximum
blood from their marooned population. Denial of democracy and other
human rights is a consensus point for otherwise these often hostile
rival religious and political authorities.
Algeria, where France created a mess in league with the army, is
another sad reminder of both religion and politics being hijacked by
respective rent-seeking interests. Saudi and the Gulf regimes while
kow-towing to the western elite blatantly discriminate against
foreign workers from poor countries. They have altogether different
policies and touchstones for the western convicts while dozens of
poor Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and Afghans are routinely executed by
Muttaa (religious police) outside Friday mosques.
The Westerners, even after their conviction, are habitually pardoned
for similar crimes by the Muslim kings and emirs. Not a single alim
from the so-called Muslim heartland has ever raised his voice over
this sheer discrimination that smacks of a rabidly racist ideology.
No end to double standards! Though the status quo or external
hegemony are not acceptable yet concurrently leading innocent and
vulnerable Muslim citizens into kamikaze attacks is equally
reprehensible.
The humanist reinterpretation of Islam and likewise of secularism
can surely deliver Muslims from this continued monopolist
exploitation by the political and religious authoritarianism, and
also augur an overdue Islamic renaissance. It may also offer a
unique alternative to an abrasive modernity in the West itself
locked in collective violence perpetrated through institutional
racism and unilateralist militarism. The reconstruction of long
overdue Ijtiha'ad is the only way-out of gnawing societal and
statist oppression; can offer a respite from suffocating conformity
while halting the foreign denigration of a human heritage like
Islam.
India's secularism, despite its severe strains and some
contradictions due to a rather erstwhile dismissive elitism, is the
best modus operandi for similar plural societies and could offer a
useful parallel for a rethink among the Muslim re constructionists.
Its Gandhian portents appear similar to Islamic sensitivities on
religion, as here religion is accepted as a part of collective and
individual life without being totally divorced from the public
domain.
However, while Muslims in India have felt comparatively safer under
a secular system and are certainly apprehensive of a majoritarian
Hindutva, their own localism, dependence upon some clerics for
political articulation and other socio-economic handicaps have not
allowed them to fully benefit from the systemic dynamics in the
country. But compared to any other Muslim state, India's democracy
still offers the best hope for coexistence and its secular system
the viable safety valve for minorities. It is a different thing that
the clerical versions of Islam abound Muslim India, yet secularist
polity is the best guarantee for collective survival and welfare of
Indian
Muslims and other such minorities.
This is not to deny the fact that, to a great extent, India's own
future and of its plural communities depends upon the policies of
its majority population groups. If the Hindus, as egged on by Kar
Sevaks and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, are intent upon turning the
country into a Hinduist mould the minorities may have fewer options
at their disposal boding a major disaster for the most plural and
equally populous country on earth.
It is only the time and the Indian political and intellectual
leadership who hold the key to this grave challenge. It is still
difficult for practicing and reconstructing Indian intellectuals
like Asghar Ali Engineer or Mushirul Hasan to be able to hoist the
banner of a tolerant, accommodative and all-encompassing Muslim
secularism and the opposition to them mainly comes from Muslim
clergy as well as well from Hindu fanatics.
Empirically, secularism as seen in the West, despite a paucity of
self-professing states, emerged through a gradual separation of
church and state but in its original form secularism stood for the
primacy of mundane knowledge away from the monopoly of
ecclesiastics. Secularism is not culture- or region-specific.
Thus, it is uniquely akin to Political Islam in its struggle against
colonialism. The development of the Ummayyid literature and
philosophy in Muslim Spain, promotion of learning and debate in
Mughal India, pre-Safwid Persia, Central Asian and Turkish kingdoms
-on several extended occasions- reflected a model where worldly
knowledge and religious interaction coexisted without vetoing each
other out. The diffusion of Greek, Hindu and Chinese learning and a
conscious synthesis with the African and European mores and customs
energised Islamic civilisation at all times.
Very few people may know that the Muslim metropolitan centers such
as Constantinople, Delhi, Lahore and Baghdad stayed Muslim minority
cities even under the Muslim rule, which reveals an amazing level of
tolerance and co-existence at a time when most of the world suffered
from inquisitions and pogroms. Thus, irrespective of the heuristics
of the term itself, the practice of a humanist secularism as an
exploitation-free, egalitarian and forward looking system-both in
politics and education-falls in line with the Islamic heritage
spreading over centuries.
A hasty rejection of secularism, despite its various pitfalls as a
western construct or a modernist edifice, may not be a fair way to
judge its merits. Muslim secularism is a possibility in the near
future, as it has been a historic Muslim experience in the past and
is not an alien proposition. It may prove a death knoll to the vast
disempowerment and continued exploitation of Muslim masses both by
the sultans and scholars. That is where intellectuals such as Syed
Ahmed Khan, Muhammad Abduh, Muhammad Iqbal, Fazlur Rahman, Ali
Shariati, Abdul Karim Surush, Asghar Ali Engineer and some Shia
clerics in Iraq become more persuasive.
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