Islamic Utopia?

Mostly educated in the west, the Muslim Leaguers who founded Pakistan couldn’t imagine a conflict between their faith and the working of a modern democratic state. Pakistan they promised would be a democratic utopia of equality, religious freedom and tolerance. Such was the power of their rhetoric that many non-Muslim groups in the Muslim majority areas came out to endorse the Pakistan demand. One Hindu professor of Forman Christian College Lahore went as far as to say that he would prefer to live in the egalitarian order of Islam, than be subjected to the caste inspired order of Hinduism that he feared would be the case in India. Whatever high hopes these groups might have had, especially with the appointment of a scheduled caste Hindu (Jogindranath Mandal) as the first law minister of Pakistan, were shattered in the next few years. The compulsions of the real politic made the Muslim League backtrack on any promises it had made about the separation of church and state.

Within the Muslim community the Leaguers had been pitted against the mullahs who had sought to discredit them for being too immoral and too westernized. Following the dictum ‘in order to exclude them, include them’ (exemplified by our soldier-president’s rationale for the national security council) Liaqat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister promised an ‘Islamic’ state where all citizens of the state would have complete freedom of religion and equal rights. In 1949 despite the unanimous walkout of the minorities and the opposition from the Constituent Assembly, the League government passed the famous Objectives resolution. This resolution, at least in the naïve mind of Liaqat, promised an Islam that would uphold human rights, women’s rights, the right to religious freedom, and the principle of equality of all citizens of the state. The Prime Minister, soon to be assassinated, had even suggested that in his Islamic utopia, even a non-Muslim could become the head of the state. The modernists rejoiced at having pulled one up on the mullahs. Little did they know that the farsighted Maudoodi was also rejoicing. Maulana Maudoodi came out in the favor of the resolution declaring proudly that ‘the country we had considered our enemy till yesterday, now we consider our home.’ He knew ofcourse that the Pandora’s box had been left open. After surviving the commuted death penalty for inciting sectarian violence against the Ahmadis, Maudoodi set about ‘reforming’ Pakistan in his own mould. His party the Jamaat-e-Islami kept up the fight succeeding in pushing its agenda despite repeatedly electoral defeats. Ahmadis were first victims in 1974 under an elected and supposedly liberal government. Then came the Hudood ordinance and the blasphemy laws under a dictator of choice. In the ill-fated democratic period after Zia’s crash, the Jamaat vehemently agitated for the shariat bill. On the foreign front it continued to dominate the Government’s policies especially in Kashmir and Afghanistan. The destination was the same: ‘Islamic Utopia’. The coordinates had changed. By the 1980s the Jamaat Leaders were promising an all-conquering puritanical Islam, a sort of straitjacket know-all kind of Islam which they believed would rekindle the fire of the ‘Aslaf’ thereby re-establishing the supremacy of Islam over all religions of the World.

It is true that there is a clash in the world we live in, but it is not the clash of civilizations, as Mr. Huntington would have us believe. Rather it is a clash of these two very different and idealistic versions of the ‘Islamic utopia’ that I have mentioned. The clash between the revivalists and the modernists is not unique to Pakistan. This is happening all through out the Muslim World. Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran and to a lesser extent Turkey are all witnessing this boiling undercurrent. While in Pakistan the revivalists have been beaten at the polls, free elections in Algeria and Turkey have brought right wing Islamic parties into power only to be subverted by a pro-West military coup. Iran’s moderate majority is kept on a tight leash by the theocrats. What happened in Afghanistan under the Taliban is a scary picture of what might happen if the revivalists were ever to triumph convincingly over the modernists.

The defeat of the modernists will also be defeat for Islam, for our religious leaders have a bad habit of not learning from history. Western secularism developed as a reaction to oppression and persecution in the name of religion in the Christian world. Over time the bigots in the church, through their obscurantism, succeeded in discrediting Christianity. The way our religious leaders are going, they will only succeed in doing the same to Islam. Magnificent ornaments of Gold and silver can also become chains, and all chains need to be broken. In order to avoid such a situation, the Muslim community needs to undertake the Ijtehad, a time tested method central to the preservation of Islam. The Islamic worldview especially on human rights, women’s rights, religious freedom, freedom of conscience and democracy, needs to be updated immediately. The path to revitalization of the Islamic order lies in the acceptance of modernity. Only if we exemplify ourselves as human beings, will we succeed. This means an end to all violence in the name of religion, creation of liberal democracies in the Islamic countries, and the uplift of the depressed strata of our society i.e. the women and the religious minorities. Failing this, we will fall into an abyss on the wrong side of history.