Which Islam?

“Which Islam?” Parvez butted in. “The Islam of the Flat Earth Society? The Islam of the religious scholars? The Islam of Iranian revolutionaries? The Islam of Saudi Wahabbis? The Islam of the state-obsessed Muslim Brotherhood and the Jamaat-e- Islami? The simpleton Islam of Tablighi Jamaat? He was so frustrated he did not realize he was shouting.” (Zia Uddin Sardar in ‘Desperately Seeking Paradise’, p.327)

I hadn’t read any of Zia Uddin Sardar’s (ZS) books. A couple of weeks back, I was leisurely browsing the collection of books on Islam in our local area library when I came upon Desperately Seeking Paradise by ZS. I was ticked off by the title but nonetheless I picked up the book and took it to the circulation desk for check out. The only motivation for me to borrow this book was that I wanted to read a book by ZS. I had quoted him in my “What is Islamization of Science?” and was disappointed because I didn’t have the opportunity of reading any of his works at first hand.

I read the whole book selecting chapters randomly. I was deeply touched by his desire to see the Muslim world developing into a leading society of the whole world. I empathized with him and was equally pained to see the Muslim world factually as one of the most confused and backward societies of the world. The confusion has engulfed the whole Muslim world. The Muslims believe that they were the glorious and the most successful people of the world in the middle ages because of their religion, Islam. The truth is otherwise. They became successful when they stopped Islam from invading their creative engagements in philosophy and science. Islam did inspire them to spread out in the world but their real success was due to their unequalled progress in science and philosophy.
Mamun-al-Rashid’s Bait-el-Himah (House of Wisdom) admitted scholars of all religions. The ulema hated Mamun-al-Rashid for his liberal and skeptical views. He protected the Muslim skeptics, the Mutazallites, and patronized them in their creative work. The greatest scholars of Islam were skeptics. Religion was not their passion. Many of them were good practicing Muslims but their real devotion was to their intellectual pursuits.

Many of us who hark back to the past glories of our forebears wrongly believe that the excellence achieved by them was by virtue of their religious faith. Although secularism was not consciously the state policy, at an individual level secularism played a dominant role in the intellectual milieu. The Muslim scientists kept their religion as a personal and private practice and did not allow it to interfere in their work. Majority of us tend to believe that if we succeed in developing a pure Islamic outlook (Which Islam? is a bogey here also) intellectually and practically, every thing else will fall in place. ZS has comprehensively looked at it and has ended up in frustration. Having looked at the intellectual comprehension of Islamic theories and practices in many Islamic countries like Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, etc. from close quarters, the question of which Islam? relentlessly stared in his face.

The universality of religion is indeed a chimerical concept (or a mis-concept) in which the followers of almost every religion freely indulge. This indulgence massages their ego and the feeling good about it. The empirical evidence totally refutes it. In the Muslim world of today, Iranian brand of Islam (Shi’ism) is fiercely pitted against the Saudi Wahabbi Islam. Both of them are extreme in their theory and practice. And both of them are arraigned against the whole world. The banality of the rational Muslims is these extreme views and interpretations of religion. Those of us who feel good about our glorious past, try to rationalize and give it as a proof of the greatness of our religion. When we try to find examples of good governance and fair and just treatment of the people by the state, we invariably end up only in giving examples of some good rulers such as Omar-al-Khattab, Omar bin Abdel-el-Aziz, the Abbasid khalifahs Harun and Mamun-al-Rashid among others. Apart from the good rulers, there was no continuing fair and just system of governance. There was no constitution and there were no rights of the common people. Whatever rights were given to them was a special favor of a particular ruler; they didn’t have any constitutional rights.

In a western style secular system, on the other hand, people have rights which are given to them by the constitution and not by a special favor of a particular ruler. Any head of the state cannot take them away by any whimsical act. In such a system, religion is a personal thing in which state does not interfere. However, public practice and display of any particular religion is not countenanced.

Although many of us despise the western style secularism, western science and philosophy, western democracy, and modernity, we do not have any reasonable and pragmatic substitutes for them. The result is an intellectual schism. We hate western education but acquire it nevertheless because without it we can not hope to have a decent living. We hate modernity because it is western in character and essence but we love to enjoy its fruits and products such as cars, travel by air, air conditioning and central heat, color televisions, refrigerators and microwaves, to name only a few of them. Why don’t we accept modernity and secularism as a matter of course?

When Islamic Spain and Baghdad were at their peaks of excellence and science and philosophy flourished there, many western scholars traveled from their far off countries to Spain and Baghdad in search of knowledge. They learnt Arabic so that they could read and comprehend books of science and philosophy written by the Muslim authors. When they returned to their respective lands, they translated these books in their language to transmit knowledge to their people. Books of Ibn-e-Sina and Razi were used as text books in Europe for several centuries even after the downfall of the Muslim world. The Europeans acquired knowledge from the Muslim world and produced in due time Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. The foundation of science was laid in Europe using the scientific tradition of the Muslim world. Why can’t and shouldn’t do the same thing now? Why do we hesitate in acquiring the western knowledge and using it to lay the foundation of the modern scientific tradition? Anything that is manifestly good is good whether it is western or eastern. We should have no hesitation in acquiring “the good.” Let us forget “Pidram Sultan bood” (my father was a king). We should devote our energies in acquiring knowledge and advancing it further from its existing frontiers. We should keep our religion at a personal level and not try to make it universal. Because, such an effort is fruitless and futile.