Islam in crisis? Blame ulema - By Sandhya Jain

jul 9th, 2007

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Islam in crisis? Blame ulema

Edit page daily pioneer July 10 2007

Sandhya Jain

Far from expanding the aura of Islam, the recent Glasgow Airport attack
only underlines the shrivelling of the sphere of influence of jihad and
Muslim rage. This may seem surprising to those easily alarmed by media
overkill about terror cells lurking in every locality, but a brief pause
would show that Islam's disunity and absence of strategy to face its
*Western 'tormentors'* have led it into the proverbial chakravyu from
which exit is unknown.

This may sound harsh, but the truth is that Islam is in peril because it
is ideologically at sea. Islam appeared ascendant after the 1979 fall of
the hated pro-American Shah Reza Pehlavi, and Muslim societies
everywhere clamoured for orthodoxy to protect their culture from
perceived Western decadence; but the Iranian Revolution exposed
resurgent Islam's inability to cope with the modern world.

Post-1979, moderate regimes like Egypt and Jordan enhanced their Western
ties to survive threats from radial clerics, while anti-West regimes
came under greater pressure. Libya caved in after prolonged defiance and
Iraq is a virtual colony; its laws are being rapidly changed to convert
it into an American corporate paradise. Pakistan, linchpin of
international terror, is in a bigger mess than Afghanistan; and
Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, is weak and has lost its oil
wealth through the creation of East Timor. Iran is already on the radar
of oil-thirsty Texas majors; Saudi Arabia and Turkey are hardly stable.

This highlights Islam's true crisis: Not a single Muslim country is
politically, economically, militarily and intellectually viable.
Politically, most regimes rely on the West to survive the hatred of
their own people. Then, they are interlinked with Western economies even
when they have rich resources like oil. Militarily and technologically,
not a single Islamic country can manufacture its own weaponry or
contribute to world technology in any sphere. This is the reason why I
insist that no matter how many terror attacks happen (they appear to be
declining in India), Islam is the loser. It cannot secure sovereign
control over any non-Muslim society.

But the greatest vacuum is in the realm of thought. In its conflict with
the West-dominated world, Islam has failed to contribute thinkers who
can articulate the Muslim quest in terms acceptable to both orthodox and
modern-contemporary believers. No important and independent Muslim
thinker resides in a Muslim country. Modernising Muslims live in the
West and speak an idiom unacceptable to the masses. This is Islam's true
dilemma.

One reason for this crisis, in my view, is the insistence of today's
ulema that their interpretation of the Quran be fully accepted by the
faithful if they wish to escape the charge of apostasy. This gives Islam
an absurd rigidity its intellectuals say did not exist in the past, and
internally fractures Muslim society into 'flocks' controlled by the
ulema of different mosques. Obsession with the small picture - witnessed
in India in the denial of alimony to Shah Bano and the forced return of
Gudiya to a husband she had forgotten, and in the stoning of
'adulterous' (often raped) women in other parts of the world - have
forced the community to shrink, rather than grow. Self-confidence is
undermined by the ulema who, ironically, are the only leaders Muslims
recognise.

I hesitate to indulge in comparative theology, yet, the Vedic Hindu
arrangement is worth offering for the consideration of monotheistic
traditions. Hindu tradition is divided into two streams: Sruti, revealed
divine word, and Smriti, actual practice. Sruti and Smriti may converge
at times, but more often they diverge. Hence, the Hindu hierarchy of
values where the ideal is placed above the actual, but the actual is
tolerated though exhorted to strive for the ideal. My point is simply
that the Hindu ability to accept the reality of the 'Imperfect Man' is
the source of the unique Hindu mental agility to cope with an
ever-changing world.

In monotheistic traditions, however, emphasis on perfection through
driving the human herd to attain impossible attributes inevitably gives
totalitarian power to religious or political vanguards, denying genuine
liberty and autonomy to the masses. The Christian world tried to resolve
this crisis by attempting a division of the spiritual and political
authority. But the American experience in particular shows that
corporates and other institutions continue to wield disproportionate
power in society; nor is the Church entirely bereft of political leverage.

There are some lessons India should draw from the current international
brouhaha over the Glasgow-Bangalore link. We must tackle our home-grown
or Pakistan-trained terrorists firmly, and shun a propensity to suffer
vicariously for the West. We need not refuse cooperation to Western
countries attacked by terrorists, but we must sharply rebuke
interference in our internal affairs. Britain wants help in probing the
Bangalore links of the UK bombers, but why did the European Union, of
which it is a member, ask President APJ Abdul Kalam not to hang Mohammed
Afzal, prime accused in the attack on Indian Parliament?

It was Western propaganda that not one Indian has been found linked to
the dreaded Al Qaeda, when the fact is that all Islamic terror cells
have internal connections and arrangements with each other, and this
fact is highlighted when it suits the investigating agencies. I am
suspicious that Britain found the Al Qaeda link with Indian Muslim
doctors precisely at a time when it was keen to repatriate Indian
doctors (Hindus and Muslims alike) whom it had invited to settle there.

India has no legitimate reason to be sympathetic to Britain. Modern
Islamic jihad came to our shores at the instance of the British, in
whose hospitable clime Choudhary Rehmat Ali conceived the idea and the
boundary of Pakistan. British officials facilitated the Great Calcutta
Killing of 1946, which forced Congress to accept Partition, by removing
Hindu officers from all affected police stations. Louis Mountbatten
'advised' Jawaharlal Nehru to take the Jammu & Kashmir dispute to the
United Nations, and we have since suffered a jihad that has slowly
spread from Kashmir Valley to each and every State.

All international discourse since the New York attack has been
West-centric. And the West has used it to launch its own 'holy war' to
cleverly reoccupy lands once held by Christendom. India was never one of
them: Let the religion of love grapple with the religion of peace.