BY MAULANA WAHIDUDDIN KHAN
The biggest problem facing Muslims today is that they
still do not know that they are living in a new age. They have no idea of
the implications of this. Their leaders, and they themselves, still cling
to a centuries-old mind-set which is totally out of date. Because of this,
they are unfit for the new age. This is also true for the majority of
Muslims who live in the West, because they share the same mind-set. They
may have studied in western universities but their mind-set is almost
identical and this is reflected in what they read, think and talk about in
their homes. They wish to impose this old mind-set on everyone else. Of
course, this is impossible and is nothing but daydreaming and wishful
thinking.
The old mind-set of Muslims which is still so deeply
rooted even today was a product of an authoritarian political system.
Today we live in an age of democracy and so we need a total revolution in
our way of thinking. For thousands of years kings ruled and so popular
culture was also authoritarian. There was a single king and the rest of
the people were his subjects. There was a single master and the rest of
the people were his slaves or servants. A radical break occurred in the
seventh century with the advent of Prophet Muhammad. The Koran talked
about democratic decision-making, about what is called shura. This
represented a veritable revolution.
However, the Arabs and others who later embraced Islam
were mentally not prepared for the democracy that the Koran heralded.
Their minds were deeply moulded for many centuries before the advent of
the prophet by authoritarian culture which could not be changed overnight
after conversion to Islam. That is why the democratic notion of
khilafat was soon subverted. Although the term was still used, it
became a cover-up for authoritarian monarchy after the period of the ‘four
rightly guided caliphs’.
And so in the name of khilafat various despotic
sultans ruled over Muslim lands. This was the case everywhere – under the
Abbasids and Umayyads, under the Mughals, under the Arab rulers of Spain.
The word of the sultan was law and anyone who dared to oppose him was
summarily killed.
Why Muslim countries lack democracy
Because of this, democratic culture was never able to
prosper in Muslim lands although this was precisely the intent of the
Koran. This continues to be the case even today. Scores of Muslim
countries style themselves as ‘democracies’ but they are nothing of the
sort. In actual fact, they are all dictatorships. Not a single one of the
57 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference is a
democracy in the real sense of the word. One reason for this is that
self-styled Islamic ideologues wrongly insist that democracy is
‘un-Islamic’. This claim is not true at all. I see no contradiction
between Islam and democracy.
Belief is the real part of Islam but politics is only
relative. So far as belief is concerned, Muslims should follow the eternal
teachings of Islam as it is. So far as politics is concerned, it should be
left to the democratic process. Free and fair elections should be held
after the completion of each term and the elected candidate should be
allowed to complete the term and be given full opportunity to govern.
According to my study of Islam, this is in full conformity with Islamic
teachings.
The democratic principle of shura that the Koran
stressed took centuries to culminate. This happened not in a Muslim
country however but in France in the wake of the French revolution. Islam
had started this process of democracy, of revolt against dictatorship, but
the process culminated in a non-Muslim country. It did not happen in a
Muslim country because for centuries Muslim culture had remained deeply
authoritarian and inimical to democracy, which is a complete contradiction
of the Koranic spirit.
Democracy is based on the notion of equal rights for all.
In a democracy, the prime minister has in theory the same citizenship
rights as a commoner. This is a complete contradiction of monarchy.
Lamentably, Muslims have not been able to accept this basic principle of
democracy. They want rights for themselves which they are unwilling to let
others enjoy.
A democracy is characterised by a culture of give and
take. Authoritarian monarchical culture is based on taking without giving.
This is the basic problem of Muslims today. They want to take but not to
give. They demand rights and privileges for themselves but do not want to
give these to others or to allow them too to enjoy these rights. In this
way they end up denying themselves the many opportunities and spaces that
democracy could otherwise provide them with.
Let me clarify this issue with the help of an example.
Just the other day the Government of Pakistan imposed a ban on the social
networking site, Facebook, because it carried a cartoon of Prophet
Muhammad. Now, I don’t know much about computers but I believe that
Facebook is a great blessing, a wonderful means of communicating where you
can convey your message throughout the world at no cost at all. In fact,
my team at the Centre for Peace and Spirituality uses it almost every day
to send out our messages. It is truly a great blessing.
Democracy means that everyone has the same rights. When it
comes to Facebook, Muslims have as much right to use it as do others. If
Muslims want to use Facebook or any other form of communication to convey
the message of Islam to the world (as I and my team are doing), they
cannot stop others from using it.
Islam teaches us to search for and use opportunities and
to ignore the problems. Facebook provides us with such great opportunities
to convey the message of Islam to others. Naturally, some people might
misuse it, as they have in this case, but the right approach is not to ban
Facebook and create a huge hue and cry. The misuse of Facebook cannot be
stopped. It is best ignored while Muslims should creatively use the same
technology for their own purpose of explaining the truth of Islam to
others. If Muslims have the right to propagate Islam, others too have the
right to propagate their views, no matter how different they may be to
ours. We cannot seek to ban them from speaking.
Let me clarify this with the help of a personal example.
Some years ago I was in Lucknow where I met a scholar of Hindu background
who was something of an atheist. He argued that if Prophet Muhammad had
not been born, it would have made no difference to human history. Now, had
some other Muslim been in my place, he might have got inflamed by such a
remark. He might even have resorted to violence. But I did not react in
this way. After all, just as I had the right and freedom to speak, so did
he. Instead of getting angry, I turned my attention to researching the
life of the prophet on the basis of which I wrote two books in Urdu:
Islam Aur Daur-e-Jadid Ka Khaliq and Paighambar-e-Inqilab. Both
were later translated into English as Islam: Creator of the Modern Age
and Muhammad: The Prophet of Revolution respectively. These books
proved to be immensely popular.
Had I responded to the Lucknow scholar with violence or
agitation, as is the common Muslim response to provocation, I would not
have been able to write these books and thereby influence so many people
with my arguments. Had I reacted negatively by becoming angry, this would
have further reinforced his negative view of Muslims. This is not the
Islamic way of doing things. After all, even in the prophet’s time his
opponents said bad things about him but he never reacted by ordering that
they should be forcibly silenced or killed. Unfortunately, as the Facebook
controversy in Pakistan shows, Muslims have not learnt the democratic,
which is also the truly Islamic, means to resolving contentious issues.
Hence they create even more problems for themselves and for others.
Sadly, this is not what Pakistani Muslims or the Pakistani
government chose to do. Instead, they overreacted, banning Facebook, thus
effectively denying themselves the wonderful possibilities that this
technology provides of conveying the true message of Islam to others. At
the root of this is the authoritarian mind-set of Muslims which is ill at
ease with the demands of the democratic age. This is causing them to face
grave problems while also further reinforcing negative stereotypical
images about Islam and Muslims in the minds of non-Muslims.
Let me clarify my point about the lack of democratic
culture proving to be a cause of serious damage to Muslims themselves with
the example of Iraq today. Iraq was ruled by Saddam Hussein, a military
dictator, for over two decades. He came to power not through democratic
means but rather through a military coup. He continued to stay in power
through rigged elections that made a complete mockery of democracy.
After supporting him for several years, America began to
feel that its interests were being harmed by him and so decided to unseat
him in order to bring democracy to Iraq. It asked Saddam to step down, for
free elections to be held and for a new elected government to come to
power. The Iraqi ulema ought to have agreed to this proposal. After all,
dictatorship is un-Islamic and genuine democracy is supported by Islam.
They ought to have given a fatwa in favour of democracy and called for an
end to Saddam’s un-Islamic dictatorship.
However, they did not do so largely because democracy is
against their mind-set, the same authoritarian and thoroughly un-Islamic
mind-set that millions of other Muslims share. Had they lent their support
to democratic elections by issuing fatwas to that effect, thereby
facilitating Saddam’s exit and his replacement by a democratically elected
leader, it is likely that Iraq would have been spared the horrors that it
has had to witness in the course of the American invasion of that
country.
It is sad but true that because of this mind-set, most
Muslims simply cannot fit comfortably in the democratic age. They still
mentally live in the age of authoritarian kingship. Some of them even
believe that they should rule the entire world and that no one else has
the right to rule. They believe that they alone are right and everybody
else is wholly wrong. Needless to say, such thinking is a complete affront
to democracy. This attitude is a major cause for negative feelings and
attitudes towards Muslims on the part of others. One can safely say that
it is not non-Muslims but Muslims themselves who are their own greatest
foes.
Barring, of course, the primary sources of Islam, almost
all the literature that we Muslims read today is based on this
authoritarian model. Scores of self-styled ‘Islamic’ ideologues,
pen-pushers and poets also peddle a completely distorted, highly
authoritarian and wholly anti-democratic interpretation of Islam that has
nothing to do with Islam as it really is. This is based on the notion,
wholly unwarranted in Islam, that only Muslims have the right to rule and
that the rest of humanity must remain subordinated to them; that Muslims
must be emperors and others their subjects. With a mind-set like that, how
can Muslims live in today’s new, democratic age?
In the meanwhile, non-Muslims are going ahead and
adjusting very well to the demands of the new age and are willing to
listen to other views. Just the other day I was invited to a Hindu-run
college to speak on Islam. When my team asked the manager of the college
if they could distribute copies of the English translation of the Koran
that we have prepared, he was delighted and we were able to give scores of
copies of the Koran to the almost entirely Hindu audience who very happily
and willingly accepted them.
We are often invited by Hindu organisations to talk about
Islam and we have never had any negative experiences with them. In fact,
most of the Hindus we have met are sincerely interested in our work and
are more than willing to cooperate with us because they believe that truth
has many dimensions. The contrast with the authoritarian, dictatorial and
anti-democratic Muslim mind-set is really stark.
In today’s age those who can creatively adjust to and
champion democracy will survive and flourish. Those who consistently
oppose it are fated to remain misfits in the present world. This is what
is happening with the Muslims today. Their own anti-democratic attitudes
are responsible for their bad image in the eyes of the rest of the world.
They continue to cling to the old, authoritarian model based on the notion
of a single dictatorial leader and of subjects who have no right to
express their views. Muslims want the right to speak and preach but are
unwilling to let others too enjoy the same right. This approach of theirs
is in fundamental contradiction to democracy. It is this that lies at the
root of the widespread and deep-rooted intellectual crisis of Muslim
thought today. Unless the Muslim mind is changed, the intellectual crisis
will become even more acute with every passing day.
Muslims regard democracy as un-Islamic but this is not
true at all. Today democracy has resulted in the creation of numerous
opportunities to serve Islam rather than hinder it, contrary to what
Islamist ideologues assert. In today’s age opportunities have been
decentralised, no longer centrally controlled by kings. Power is also
becoming increasingly decentralised and governance is transforming itself
into administration. This is all a result of democracy.
According to a Hadith, before the end of the world, the
word of god would be brought to every home. The possibility of this
happening is very real today with the development of new means of
communication, such as Facebook, which, as I pointed out, instead of being
used to spread the word of god, the uninitiated in Pakistan are seeking to
ban. But it is god who is creating these new possibilities for his word to
enter every home – through new means of communication, freedom of speech
and expression and democracy, which allow people to choose whatever
religion they wish to follow.
Lamentably, Muslims do not understand the wonderful
possibilities of dawah that democracy, free expression and exchange
of views and modern communications afford. Instead, they keep complaining
against them thus doing the greatest damage to the dawah mission.
Instead of imbibing the spirit of democracy and relating to other people
in a friendly and loving manner, which is essential for dawah, they
brand them as ‘enemies’ and ‘conspirators’ thus further alienating them
from Islam and creating a bad image of themselves and of Islam as well.
Ignoring, or even denying, the wonderful opportunities that democracy has
opened up for us to engage in dawah, they are actually going
against god’s will.
Another reason why Muslims are proving to be failures in
adjusting to the realities of the new age is their tendency only to react
to events or developments without a positive agenda of their own. Just the
other day a big delegation of some self-styled Muslim ‘leaders’ went to
meet the Indian prime minister with a long charter of demands, asking for
this and that. What blindness is this that they completely ignore the
wonderful opportunities that god has bestowed on us in this modern age.
Freedom of thought, democracy, global interaction and
methods of instant communication are great blessings for us to engage in
our principal task of dawah. And all they can think of is the
reserved jobs, for instance, that the prime minister can provide them
with, if at all! They can see the prime minister but they totally ignore
the wonderful possibilities that god has opened up to us through democracy
for dawah. Instead of cherishing and using these possibilities,
they are simply running after a few dozen jobs! What a tragedy!
I constantly appeal to Muslims not to get provoked by
inflammatory remarks or writings. That is neither the democratic nor the
Islamic way of reacting. I appeal to them to exercise patience, sabr
in the language of the Koran. Some critics blame me of thereby seeking to
turn Muslims into cowards but this is completely wrong. They do not
understand what sabr actually means. In fact, sabr is a form
of great wisdom. It entails ignoring the problems and using the
opportunities that any situation affords. If Pakistani Muslims won’t
exercise sabr in the face of the cartoons on Facebook, if they do
not ignore this problem and instead focus on the wonderful possibilities
of dawah that Facebook provides, they will only be harming
themselves and the dawah cause which should be their principal
concern.
It is a natural law that problems will always remain. God
has given human beings the capacity of choice – to do good or bad – and
this freedom of choice can be misused to create problems. A foolish person
is he who remains obsessed with the problems, real and imaginary, that he
faces and hence is rendered incapable of taking advantage of the
opportunities that the situation also provides. This is how Muslims
typically behave.
On the other hand, a wise person is he who ignores the
problems he faces, is undeterred by them and who instead focuses on the
available opportunities. This is a positive formula. Unfortunately,
although this is a basic Islamic principle, Muslims have failed to learn
this basic truth. Scores of self-styled Islamic ideologues are completely
ignorant of this principle.
My whole active life has been spent trying to reform the
authoritarian Muslim mind-set which is a complete contradiction of the
democratic Islamic ethos. For this task I have had to face much opposition
from Muslims but I continue my work undeterred even in this old age of
mine. Yet I have not given up hope.
It is a natural law that, like individuals, communities
also go through various phases: birth, adolescence, maturity, old age and
decline. Muslims have passed through these stages and are presently in the
state of decline. All communities pass through this cycle and Muslims are
no exception to this rule. But it is also true that a community in decline
need not be in that state forever. It can be rejuvenated again. This is
what I have been trying to do.
(The Delhi-based Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is a noted
Islamic scholar and founder of the Centre for Peace and Spirituality. He
can be contacted at [email protected].)