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EDITORIAL |
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Islam vs. Islamism
In the hey days of Islam when
the last prophet of God lived
amongst us it was highly
unthinkable that anybody would
claim to be an Islamist. To be a
Muslim then was the ultimate in
submission, the highest
spiritual ladder that one can
climb on. The great patriarch
Abraham, the role model for all
Muslims to come, was admiringly
given only this name. Then,
Islam was more of an attitude
than an identity.
Today we live in an age of
Islamism. There are Muslims
amongst us who pride themselves
in being called as the
Islamists. The emergence of this
new sect among Muslims is a
twentieth century phenomenon,
nevertheless, it has its roots
in the holier than thou attitude
of the fiqhi mind of the
bygone days. As opposed to Islam
-- the universal deen of
God for all time, Islamism is a
20th century Muslim
response to neo-colonialism.
While Islam is a wide open gate
for all those seeking solace,
Islamism is generally seen as an
ideology that can re-establish a
Muslim hegemony. The appeal of
Islamism is limited to the
Muslims; the rest of the world
perceives it as a threat. And
while Islamism is still
considered as a strong weapon in
the hands of Muslims, the fact
is that it has delivered little
to the Muslims.
Let me explain. The modern day
Islamist movements are either
continuation or offspring of
Islamic movements that came as a
response to the termination of
the Ottoman Caliphate. The
termination of the age-old
institution had created havoc in
the Muslim mind and the Muslim
activists of that time were in
favour of an ad hoc solution, to
rebuild the fallen structure
with a greater sense of urgency.
And as they were in a hurry
there was no time to deliberate
as to why the Ottoman Caliphate
had eventually crumbled. The
Islamist organisations of
various denominations sometimes
despite their opposing and
conflicting priorities were
generally accepted as the good
omen for the future of the
Ummah. The Faith movement of
Maulana Ilyas in India and the
call for establishing an Islamic
political system by Maudoodi in
Pakistan and by Syed Qutub in
Egypt, though contradictory in
their strategy and priority,
were conveniently looked at as
movements leading to the same
destination. The post-Khilafa
movements and their thinkers
also suffered from a systemic
syndrome. It was unthinkable for
them to perceive Islam without a
political system, no matter how
deviant or different this system
had to be from the prophetic
model. Today, despite a century
of vigorous campaigning and
fierce struggle we as an Ummah
are no better. Worse still, the
Islamist movement has not
matured yet and we do not know
where to go from here.
No doubt, as a nationalist
movement Islamism has played a
significant role in the past and
it is still giving impetus to
liberation struggles in
Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq,
to name a few. But if we look at
them as prophetic movements, we
will simply be mistaken. Islam
and Islamism may appear to be
overlapping, and at times they
do, but in their essence they
are two different ideologies
altogether. Precisely speaking
Islamism is a nationalist
ideology that grew up among
Muslims. At its best it speaks
for Muslims alone. It had little
in common with the prophetic
Islam that ensures a better
future for the entire humanity
both in this world and in the
hereafter.
Today the nationalist overtone
of Islamism has overshadowed the
true colour of Islam. At a point
of history when Islam is being
demonized in the world media and
every Muslim is taken as a
potential terrorist it is no
easy to distance ourselves from
this ongoing civilization clash.
It needs no less than the
calibre of a prophet to fashion
ourselves as upholders of a
salvafic mission to all. Muslim
nationalism, or Islamism as we
call it, can only add fuel to
the fire. Probably it is high
time to put Islamism under
strict scrutiny. We cannot
ignore the fact that Islamism
has created a depressing
scenario in Muslim dominated
countries such as Algeria,
Tunisia and Egypt where the
Islamist claimed the sole right
to interpret God’s commands. The
Islamists were at war with their
own nation. This large-scale
bloodshed for a political change
has cast serious doubts not only
about their modus oprendi
but also about the nature of
their Islamicness. In 1991,
during the election campaign in
Algeria, when Ali Belhaj stated
that the legislative elections
that he expected to win was ‘the
last in Algeria’, he was
claiming the sole right to
interpret and implement Islam.
This self-conceitment of the
modern day Islamists who
otherwise appear to be
democratic has its roots in the
fiqhi milieu of the past,
a point that I shall later
return to.
The emergence of a
self-righteous religious sect
among Muslims is not a
phenomenon for which only
branded Islamists are to be
blamed. In the Taliban’s
Afghanistan which had witnessed
the revival of many religious
vocabulary of early Islam and
where Mulla Omer had preferred
to call himself as the
amir-ul-momenin, there too,
Muslims were forced to believe
that the Hanafite fiqh,
and that too as envisaged by the
Dewbandi sect, was the only true
colour of Islam. For the non-Dewbandi
ulema and Muslims of other
fiqhi schools this created a
suffocating situation and they
long prayed for the fall of the
regime. The failure of modern
day Islamists in establishing an
Islamic political order lies
mainly in our divided fiqhi
vision of Islam. The Islamists,
though tried hard to bridge the
fiqhi division among
Muslims, they did not realise
that by creating very many
organisation within the body
polity of Islam they were paving
the way for its further
disintegration. For example, in
Egypt alone the breaking away of
many long time associates from
the Ikhwan resulted in
numerous fringe organisations.
Soon the situation became
chaotic as some of these fringe
organisations accused the fellow
Islamists of betrayal and even
considered to spilling their
blood lawful.
Today, Islam and the West may
appear on a colliding course but
the real threat to Islam and
Muslims is from within. The
American occupation of
Afghanistan and Iraq is no less
troubling but what is more
worrisome is the fact that
upholders of the last revelation
are unable to put their own
house in order, save rescuing
the world from imperial
machinations. We cannot lose
sight of the fact that the
Northern Alliance played pivotal
role in the fall of the Taliban
and in Iraq due to the existing
Shia-Sunni divide the occupation
forces found it easy to prolong
their stay there. The root cause
of our malaise lies within us.
It is the deep fiqhi
division of the Ummah that has
made it almost impossible for us
to forge a united front in case
of any external aggression. In
our fourteen centuries long
history if any one could defeat
us it were only we.
As a Muslim nation our crisis is
twofold. Our internal feuds have
encouraged foreign nations to
subjugate us and occupy our
lands. But what is more alarming
is the fact that the situation
appears irredeemable as we are
totally unaware of the malaise
that afflicts us. Conceding that
our fiqhi division is no
new and none in the past could
muster courage to uproot them,
many of us believe that a return
to pure Islam, bypassing the
fiqhi schools may be
normative but is not feasible.
In fact for so long we have
lived with the four conflicting
schools of fiqh and for
so long we accepted them as
legitimate expressions of Islam
that any attempt at their
rollback appears to us as the
very demolition of Islam itself.
Islam, the religion of
patriarch Abraham, was refreshed
in human memory by the last
prophet Muhammed for all time to
come. It was perfectly explained
and documented in the Qur’an and
had taken a normative shape
during the Prophet’s own life
time. In later centuries, the
emergence of fuqaha and
of muhaddithoon were a
natural corollary to a prophetic
movement that placed so much
emphasis on knowledge but they
cannot be considered as founding
pillars of Islam whose
interpretation of religion could
hold the key for all time to
come. Had Sultan Baibars
(1260-1277 C.E.), the malik
uz-zahir as he is generally
called, not officially chosen
the four warring schools of
fiqh for state patronage,
the four great imams whom we
conceive them today as given,
would not have come down to us.
It was mainly a political
decision to quell the social
unrest of riot torn Egypt that
later resulted in the permanent
division of the Ummah. Even the
holy Harem in Makkah, the focal
point of Islamic unity, for
almost five centuries witnessed
four simultaneous prayers as
prescribed by the four great
fuqaha. The restoration of a
united prayer in the Makkah
sanctuary was lately achieved by
the Bedouin tribes of Najd under
the political leadership of King
Abdulaziz, the founder of modern
Saudi Arabia. The deep fiqhi
division of the Ummah which we
consider today as given is not
part and parcel of prophetic
Islam. It only needs
intellectual and political will
to set the things right, and for
ever. Imagine! for almost five
centuries when the Muslims had
to accept a divided prayer right
in the holy Harem there were no
dearth of sensible ulema amongst
us who could feel that the
fiqhi mind had brought us to
a total ruin. Yet they lacked
the intellectual courage and
political will that was reserved
for the salafi movement of the
early twentieth century Arabia.
If the Bedouin tribes of Najd by
their sheer political will can
uproot the centuries old
deviation why not the modern day
reformers can put an end to our
centuries old fiqhi
diaspora? To this Waliullah Ad-Dehlawi in
his tract Al-Asbab fi Bayan
al-Ikhtilaf has recounted an
interesting episode:
(Abu Zar'aa says) One day I asked my mentor Shaikh Bilqini as to what stopped Shaikh Taqiuddin Subki from undertaking ijtihad… In the beginning he was disinclined to answer. At this I said that according to me it was due to the political positions that were earmarked for the jurisprudents of the four schools. If anyone dared to go beyond the confines of taqlid, he would not get anything. He would be deprived of any position in the court. The common people would stop approaching him for edicts and brand him as an 'innovator' (bida'ti). (Abu Zar'a says that) hearing this Imam Bilqini smiled and agreed with me.
As long as our thinkers and
ulema will remain content with a
mere smile about our
intellectual diaspora there will
be little hope for redress.
Rashid
Shaz
New Delhi
01 November 2005