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question of whether or not there can be a dialogue between Islam and
secularism is a particularly pertinent one today. Many Muslims, including
the vast majority of ulema and Islamists, believe that these ideologies
are polar opposites. Hence, they insist, there is no possibility of
arriving at even a minimum consensus between the two.
Yet the question of dialogue between Islam and secularism
remains one of particular importance, especially in the context of the
rights of Muslims living as minorities in non-Muslim-majority countries.
Numerous non-Muslim scholars and even some noted Muslim intellectuals
(such as the Pakistani writer Mubarak Ali, the Indian Islamic scholar
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan and the late Professor Mushirul Haq) complain that
where Muslims are in a majority, they brand secularism as ‘anti-Islamic’
and a threat to Islam and its followers but where they are in a minority,
they regard it as a blessing. Furthermore, where they are in a minority,
they seem to argue for a secular state but at the same time insist that
Muslims must remain safe from secularism.
These intellectual contradictions, which abound in our
ulema and Islamist circles, must be resolved if we are not to be accused
of double standards. It is primarily the responsibility of the ulema and
other ‘lovers of Islam’ to address this task with the urgency it deserves.
To cite an instance of such intellectual sophistry, in
several of his Urdu works, a noted, recently deceased Indian Islamic
scholar described secularism in India as a ‘shady tree’ that must be
protected and strengthened. At the same time, in his copious Arabic
writings aimed at Arab scholars and readers, he decried secularism in no
uncertain terms. The same sort of contradiction may be observed to an even
greater degree in the case of the ideologues and activists of the
Jamaat-e-Islami of India. Those of them who consider any minor departure
from the thought of the Jamaat’s founder, Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, to be
damaging to Islam itself agree wholeheartedly with Maududi’s claim of
secularism being a form of ‘infidelity’ (kufr). To my mind, these
people are victims of a pathetic form of personality-worship and
literalism.
On the other hand are some other individuals also
influenced by Maududi’s thought but who, after 60 years or so of
lambasting secularism and hoping in vain for establishing in India what
Maududi termed ‘divine government’ (hukumat-e ilahiya), or the
Islamic caliphate, have only just begun to realise that this utterly
fanciful agenda is proving to be seriously counterproductive, creating
immense hurdles in the path of Islamic missionary work and in the struggle
for the rights of religious minorities, including Muslims, in India. It is
striking to note here that these people have been compelled to accept
secularism as the best available option. Theirs is not a choice willingly
made but one which they feel themselves forced, almost against their will,
to accept because they realise that in India they have no other realistic
option – the only alternative to a secular state in India being a Hindu
state. This dualism in their thought is both a product as well as an
indicator of the utter confusion and chaos that characterises contemporary
Muslim political thought.
In this regard, the question must be raised that if such
people do not willingly accept secularism or actually believe in it but
have been forced by circumstance (the fact of Muslims being in a minority
in India) to pay lip service to it, how far can they truly be loyal to a
system based on secularism? How far can they help such a system if they
have chosen to support secularism out of compulsion and not out of choice
and conviction?
The emotionally driven slogans of these people clamouring
for what they call ‘divine government’ and the caliphate in India have
given added ammunition to anti-Muslim Hindutva forces in the country. Thus
in an interview given to the Urdu weekly, Friday Special, the top
BJP leader and former Home Minister Murli Manohar Joshi argued that if the
Jamaat-e-Islami could talk of establishing an Islamic state in India,
there was nothing wrong if the RSS demanded that India be declared a Hindu
state.
It is an undeniable fact that Muslim religious leaders
have grossly misunderstood the meaning of secularism in its true sense.
They see secularism as wholly opposed to religion. This is reflected in
the general tendency in Urdu circles to translate secularism as
‘irreligiousness’ (la-diniyat). This is completely incorrect. In
actual fact, secularism does not imply anti-religiousness. Rather, it
simply means that the state follows a policy of non-interference in the
religious affairs of all its citizens.
There are two basic factors for the extremely erroneous
understanding and interpretation of secularism in Islamic circles. One of
these is the prevalence of a very narrow and restricted understanding of
Islam. The second is the tendency to equate secularism with a certain
strand of western secularism that seeks not just to remove or keep
religion out of politics but also to uproot religion from society and from
people’s lives. However, the fact remains that there is not just one form
of secularism. Rather, it can be understood, interpreted, expressed and
practically implemented diversely and in an expansive and flexible manner.
Thus, for instance, a noted Arab scholar, Abdelwahab
Elmessiri, speaks of two types of secularism. The first is what he calls
‘total secularism’ or ‘comprehensive secularism’ (al-ilmaniya ash-shamila)
and the other ‘partial secularism’ (al-ilmaniya al-juziya). The
former does not have any place at all for religion in the lives of
individuals and society while the latter provides for religion to be kept
apart from politics, especially in plural societies where this is the only
practicable solution.
Theocratic rule is a notion that is foreign in Islam which
has no room for priesthood. According to the famous Egyptian Islamic
scholar Mufti Muhammad Abduh, an Islamic government is a ‘civil
government’ (al-dawlah al-madaniya). A ‘civil government’, he
explains, is one that is established on the basis of human welfare and
works for this purpose keeping in mind the comprehensive interests of its
citizens. In a similar vein, the noted 13th century Islamic scholar Izz
Ibn Abdus Salam wrote in his Qawaid al-Ahkam, “The aim of the
Shariah is to put an end to evil and strife and their causes and to
promote the interests [of people] and the causes thereof.” He further
added, “People’s interests as well as evils and strife and the causes
thereof are indentified through human experience, customs and [other]
reliable means.” This suggests the importance of human experience in
devising structures, processes and policies of governance.
It is not true to claim, as many Islamist ideologues and
ulema do, that the ‘righteous caliphate’, the period of the first four
Sunni caliphs, has elaborated, expressed and fixed for all time all the
features and details of Islamic government and governance. It is well
known that Abu Bakr nominated Umar as his successor while the latter set
up a committee of six persons to decide his successor. Obviously, as this
indicates, the methods of choosing a leader can differ according to the
context.
The ‘righteous caliphate’ lasted, in practical terms, for
a very short period of only 30 years. Undoubtedly, this system of
governance was based on social justice and human welfare. However, to
consider it the final Islamic model would mean accepting the argument that
this model could not be realistically applied in later stages of history
and that it was rendered incapable of being applied after a short period
of three decades.
Certain indispensable modifications in the concept of
Islamic government had to be made in the early Islamic period itself and
this was accepted at both the ideological as well as practical levels. For
instance, the later ulema and Islamic commentators rebutted the literal
import of Hadith reports that suggested that the caliph must be from the
tribe of Quraish. Likewise, the notion that there must be a single caliph
or imam for the entire Islamic world was also negated. The noted 20th
century Indian Muslim thinker Allama Muhammad Iqbal went to the extent of
claiming in his acclaimed magnum opus The Reconstruction of
Religious Thought in Islam that in today’s world a single Muslim ummah
simply does not exist. Rather, he argued, the world’s Muslims consist of
several different communities, and he recognised that it was difficult for
all of them to form a single commonwealth.
From this discussion it clearly emerges that human
experience plays a major role in the construction of state structures. New
human experiences emerge with changing times and conditions and these need
to be incorporated in crafting patterns and processes of governance,
contrary to what doctrinaire Islamists and ulema might argue. This is also
indicated in the Koran which speaks of monarchy as being a blessing from
god (5:20) although today we are all aware of the pitfalls of this form of
governance. In this regard, all we can say is that monarchy was more
suited to the context and times this particular verse of the Koran
referred to although for today democracy is far more preferable.
A vital basis for dialogue between Islam and secularism,
and evidence that such dialogue is indeed acceptable in terms of the
Shariah, is the polity established in Medina by the prophet. The
Constitution of this polity was, in a sense, based on the same principles
that secularism (in its widely accepted Indian sense) is founded on –
equality and respect for the religious freedom of all communities. The
leading ulema of the Deoband school, it is instructive to note, invoked
the Constitution of Medina to legitimise their role in their struggle for
a united and free India.
The noted Deobandi scholar Maulana Saeed Ahmad Akbarabadi
was of the view that there was no contradiction between Islam and
secularism as understood in its particular Indian sense. This approach to
both secularism and Islam, I believe, is the only practicable one for
plural societies today and can serve as a firm basis for a meaningful
dialogue between Islam and secularism and between believing Muslims and
secularists.