Distorted image of Islam
By Jafar Wafa
AMERICAN historian Daniel Pipes, a known ‘neocon’ who has remained associated with President Bush’s administration, is reported to have said at a conference in Rome early this month that “the Islamists are the scions of frustrated civilization which harks back to the achievements of Islam during the first centuries of its existence.”
Another notable American Richard Nixon, the ex-president, has put it differently in his book (‘Seize the Moment’) that “Islam is not only a religion but founder of a major civilization.”
He had, evidently, in mind the contribution of Islam in civilizing mankind rather than merely prescribing rites and rituals, the historical aspect of the Faith — the aspect that has received scant attention by its pontifical class.
It is the uncompromising monotheism of Islam and the Quranic concept of the universal brotherhood of the believers in monotheism “the believers are no else than brothers” — 49:10), that has kept the Islamic civilization alive despite the political and economic domination by the West during the last three centuries.
The institution of Islamic caliphate was based on this very concept of Islamic brotherhood and it had bound together a sprawling commonwealth of Muslim sovereign states — albeit loosely and nominally during the two centuries of decadence preceding its decline. Its shadow fell on a vast area on the three well-populated and developed continents of Europe, Asia and Africa — the continents of America and Australia not being fully developed then.
All sovereign sultanates from Turkestan to Hindustan and Muslim monarchies from Morocco to Malaysia took pride in receiving investiture from the reigning caliph as it conferred religious legitimacy on their right to rule. It lasted for thirteen centuries, from the first quarter of the seventh to the first quarter of the twentieth, or from the election of the first Caliph in 632 A.D. till the abolition of the Caliphate by Ataturk in 1922 A.D. No other international political institution has proved so enduring.
Held together by a common faith and almost identical values and way of life this arrangement had, in its heyday, successfully scotched the narrow parochial tendencies and encouraged unfettered travel and unrestricted trade and offered freedom to the citizens to acquire domicile of any place in this commonwealth.
With decline in religious appeal, the institution could not survive for long; and this conglomeration of sovereign states was, one by one, taken over by the newly emerging colonial powers of western Europe and Russia, which professed Christianity while the disintegrated states of the Caliphate, occupied by the former, had been the stronghold of Islam.
This is the ‘frustrated civilization’ (in Daniel Pipe’s words) of which the present generation of Muslims are ‘scions’, or descendents of the civilization which has past achievements to its credit.
The instance of the dominant Christian powers of today, having extended their whole-hearted support to Israel and their complete unanimity in condoning the Jewish aggression, has brought home to the “Islamists” the truth of the Quranic edict that “they (the Jews and Christians) are friends among themselves (5:51).”
Otherwise, there was no reason for the members of the ‘frustrated civilization’ to stand, allegedly, pitted against the Christian West, after having reconciled themselves gradually, over a period of three centuries, to the domination of the Christian West with silent admiration for the latter’s astounding advancement in physical and biological sciences and peaceful introduction of democratic polity in its own habitat.
The fact, therefore, is that the ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and the Jewish settlers or the Kashmiris and the occupying foreign forces or the Chechens and savage Russian army and, likewise, freedom struggles of Muslim Moros in Philippines or Islamic resistance in southern Thailand are purely political in character bearing no similarity to the faith-based Crusades fought between Christian Europe and Muslim Arabs in the medieval era, which is a forgotten past so far as Muslims are concerned.
But the way America, the sole superpower, currently ruled by orthodox Christians and Jews is siding with the brutal and brutish ruling clique of Israel while the otherwise liberal and unorthodox European states are looking the other way, it is but natural that the Muslims all over the world who have, over the past centuries, considered themselves as one single fraternity, will react, very adversely, to this attitude of the Christian states and the Jews over the Palestinian issue which may actually be a political and tactical problem — the West, needing oil and gas more than others in the world, and the Middle East sitting over most of the precious liquid and vaporous mineral.
The propaganda by the American print media and think-tanks in the US, in the wake of 9/11, that Islam preaches religious intolerance and encourages militant tendencies among its adherents is reprehensible.
The greatest mischief having been done by those who claim to be authority on Islam. They refer to quranic verses such as the one that exhorted the small band of Muslims at the time of the ‘revelation’ to fight the infidels of Makkah in self-defence after they had suffered at their hands for fifteen long years. They tore from the context such verses as “fight them until persecution is no more and religion is for Allah” (2:193).
Unfortunately, our own clerics also share the blame for presenting a grossly distorted image of Islam as a religion that lays greater emphasis on Jihad, or militaristic struggle, than on peaceful, non-violent ways of seeking redress of the wrongs done to the Muslim community. Their notion stems from their approach to understanding the holy text treating every verse thereof as an injunction applicable in all circumstances without regard to the historical background and topical significance of each revelation. The Quranic translation and commentary in most of the languages does contain explanatory notes about the historical context of each revelation — Shan-i-nuzool’, as it is termed by our theologians in Urdu.