An introspective comparison of various Muslim societies

The four words that collectively form the title of this essay, are so easy to speak, but I bet that not many understand its meaning completely, might be not even me. However, this is what the Muslim society needs right now, a complete introspection. The good old days of the Fatmids are now more than eight centuries old and what we obviously cannot do today is to gloat over our achievements back then. While we completely fail to understand modern sociology, science and even religion, there on the other hand, we have already gained expertise in extracting incorrect implementations of whatever literature is available to us. When will this stop? Certainly, I have no answers to it.

But what I know is that things can well improve provided that the words of our ‘enlightened’ and ‘moderate’ leaders are converted to solid implementation and re-structuring. This may not be in the offing due to various reasons which ought to be discussed here but only briefly. First of all, we must go through a chronology of historical events that encapsulate Muslim history.

Contradiction in the Ummah starts from the time of the Last Sermon of the Holy Prophet. Two extremely diverse schools of thought have came in to stay. One claims that the Prophet did not name a direct descendant while the other claims that the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law Ali, was designated as the heir and descendant of the Prophet and this designation was carried out in complete accordance to the message and Sunnah of the Almighty. Anyways, history goes on. After, the four caliphs passed away, the Ummayyads took control of the Muslim society. Their reign lasted for about 90 to 100 years. During this time period, most of their energy was dedicated in mass killings of all those who revolted against them and of the Imami Shi’i. The Abbasid Caliphate was a little better, but they, like the Ummayyads had not left any stone unturned when it came to the persecution of the Imami Shi’is .

During this caliphate, literature and philosophy got major progress and circulations of publications had increased manifold. Ikhwan-us-Saffa was one of the leading books written at that time. The days of the Abbasid caliphate were not over when the glorious days of the Fatmids started. This particular period that commenced in AD. 909, lasted for about 250 years and has been acclaimed by many as the best period of Islamic History. The Fatmid period was not only a political career of a handful of descendants from the generations of the Prophet, Hadrat Ali and Hadrat Fatima (hence the Fatmids were the progeny of Hadrat Fatima and just like this, the generations of those of the offspring of Hadrat Ali who were not from Hadrat Fatima, are known as Alids read: Aleeids), it was also a period in which the Muslims made rampant progress in the fields of science, philosophy, literature, religion, economics and above all, interpretations of the Quran. During this period, many landmarks were created, one of the most important being the establishment of Al-Azhar University and the other being the establishment of a strong military. The Abbasid government was now only of name as it had lost all the credibility to the Fatmids. This era should be a role model in every possible way for the modern Muslim societies.

Secularism was now at its peak, as there was complete freedom for the press and judiciary. One very peculiar thing about this era was that despite the head of state (also) being the spiritual head of the Imami Shi’is, not a single person in the whole empire which now stretched from Iraq to Spain, was forced to accept the Fatmid Caliph as an Imam as well. It was during this period when democracy flourished in the whole Muslim empire while education and good health care could be accessed by all and above all it was during the Fatmid period that Muslims had produced major philosophers and intellectuals and scientists like Ibn-Sina, AL-Rumi and Syedna Nasir Khusro. Their ideas, knowledge and philosophy is also referred, revered and respected in many Western countries even today. All the evidences above, I feel is enough to explain that why can the Fatmid rule be used as a role model for Muslim societies today.

After the Fatmid empire, I feel that it was only the Mughal dynasty of South Asia that has given us Muslims something that we can still adore and commemorate (not gloat over). The beauty of the Taj Mahal is still appreciated world over. Where the Mughal dynasty earned us laurels in the field of Urdu literature and architecture, their share of follies. Aurangzeb’s autocratic rule had left the Mughal dynasty extremely vulnerable to external threats and the British gained quick advantage of it. During the whole Mughal rule, where there was no consolidated effort made towards science, religion, commerce and philosophy, there during the time period of the 14th to the 16th century, in Muslim societies outside India, people like Halaku Khan, Chengiz Khan and many others were doing nothing other than destroying intellectual material, burning down libraries, killing millions in war and massacre oriented campaigns, etc. this continued till the end of the time of the rise of Mustafa Kemal Attaturk.

In Muslim societies today, autocratic rule still exists, but albeit in a less repressive manner. Muslim societies today continue to be heavens of dogmatism, religious bigotry, terror, narrow mindedness and short sightedness. There have also been some positive moves like the transformation of Dubai into a tourist’s paradise and the feeling of intense depriviation and also a feeling for the need of a revolution. Yes we do need a revolution, but not a revolution of a hard-line cum religious nature like the one in Iran of 1979. The rise should be peaceful (as that of China in modern times) and one that inculcates tolerance, secularism, democracy, liberalism, complete press freedom and also leads to substantial and sustained growth in science and technology, performing arts (especially movies), economics, philosophy, religion, publications, health care and education.

Today, the whole Muslim world is fractured by internal and external tensions and issues. Most of them pertain to poverty, freedom struggle and terrorism. While the rates of poverty were soaring in Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh, there the Middle East had not pumped in its petrol dollars through direct channels. However since 9/11 the situation has been different. Freedom remains a mere illusion for our poor brethren in Palestine and Kashmir as they have been under the thrust of occupation for well over five decades.

We must truly realise by now that we have to stand up on our own feet and help our own self, just as our ancestors had done during the Fatmid Days. The Americans, Indians and Jews have occupied our land and we have not only been unable to free them despite of several futile attempts. Most of the Arab countries have been following Israel’s orders for quite some. This has to stop, the sooner the better. Terrorism has wrecked havoc on our society. It does not only earn Islam and Muslims a bad name internationally, but also creates security problems in our own countries and this has been depriving some Muslim countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh of the foreign investment that they need in order to fuel economic growth, cut down on poverty, improve the lifestyle of the common man, provide cheap health care and quality education to all, etc.

A question now arises and that is that what would be the role of the OIC from now on? This is a profound question and deserves a separate debate of its own, so lets leave it. However, what we must address over here is the importance of knowing our history. It is history that opens for us new doors of knowledge, interpretation and theoretical experience. What happens is that only when we know our history, we are capable to actually judge and point out our follies that we have committed not only in ancient but also in relatively modern times. A study of Muslim history would also allow us search answers to sensitive questions that have been raised in the Western media off and on, they are questions like “Are Islam and terrorism same shapes on two different sides of the coin?” “Can democracy and modernity go hands in hands in Islam?” “Does Islam defy modern education?” so on and so forth. It is our history, that makes us capable enough to analyse and seek answers for modern sociological, economic, political, military and economic problems, thus it is necessary for one to study history.

By now, it must be made clear that it is only through a ‘comparative introspection’ that we can truly and structurally address issues pertaining to the Muslim Ummah today.