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| Illusion of Muslim Unity Irfan Husain Recently, General Musharraf was quoted as
having said that the present weakness in the Muslim world was due to
disunity, and that once Muslims were united, they would become strong
again. How wrong he is. The mantra of Muslim unity
has been a rallying cry for generations of pan-Islamists over the
centuries that have witnessed the growing power of the West and the
simultaneous decline of the Islamic world. Many thinkers and politicians
have urged the Ummah or nation of Islam to join together and confront the
perceived enemy. For them, the lost glories of resurgent Islam would be
restored if only Muslims would unite. It is one thing for ignorant mullahs
to preach this sermon after Friday prayers; quite another for responsible
leaders to take it seriously. Charismatic leaders like Nasser and Qadhafi
have attempted to forge mergers with neighbouring countries time and
again, only to have their dreams of Muslim unity dashed on the reefs of
reality. I may be mistaken, but I think it was Suharwardy who famously
dismissed one of these attempts at the time of the Suez crisis in the
mid-fifties by proclaiming: "Zero plus zero plus zero is equal to
zero". This blunt formulation may not have won him many friends in
the Middle East, but it did reflect the stark truth. There is a feeble-minded, romantic notion
that if the Muslim world was to pool its resources and its talents, it
would become a significant power. Let us look at the facts: we are net
importers of technology, and we will continue to buy the products of
western minds for the foreseeable future. There is no research worth the
name going on in any of the forty plus countries with Muslim majorities.
So even if we could miraculously form an economic union, our economies
would not benefit much from a union as they are not complementary.
Basically, we only export primary products and low-tech goods. In brief,
there has been very little value-addition in the realm of ideas. Then there is the notion that closer ties
among Muslim countries would result in greater political strength. Closer
scrutiny does nothing to support this thesis. For instance, the tin-pot
dictators and monarchs who blight the Islamic landscape are so focused on
preserving their unpopular rule that they have little interest in rocking
the boat by espousing causes like Palestine. While they will pay
lip-service to keep their streets quiet, they will certainly not use up
their political capital for anything other than self-preservation. We have
the examples of Bosnia and Chechnya before us: these were nations that
suffered terribly without Muslim leaders lifting a finger. It was the
United States that finally ended the genocide in Bosnia while the killings
in Chechnya continue. If General Musharraf is really interested
in the subject, he should analyze the real causes of weakness and
decadence in the Muslim world. He could begin at home where, until the
mid-seventies, Pakistan seemed to have all the ingredients for economic
take-off: a solid agricultural base; reasonably good infrastructure for a
developing country; a hard-working workforce; and a relatively effective
bureaucracy. So what went wrong? People often lay the entire onus of our
painful decline at Bhutto's door. It is true that his disastrous
nationalization of key industries and educational institutions set us back
by years. But the qualitative change in our approach to progress and
development took place under Zia when faith, earlier a largely personal
aspect of life, was elevated to a public expression of belief. For
instance, two columns were introduced in the annual performance evaluation
report for civil servants that required a reporting officer to comment on
his subordinate's "attitude towards Islam" and "knowledge
of Islam". These columns still exist, by the way, and negative
entries have ruined careers. This example should serve to illustrate the
extent to which religion was pushed into every aspect of our lives under
Zia. School children are required to learn Arabic in addition to
compulsory courses in Islamiat. This obviously cuts into the time they
have for other subjects. And this emphasis on religiosity continues well
into the university. The whole country comes to a grinding halt in Ramazan.
Indeed, the public exhibition and expression of religious belief is now
virtually mandatory. This sea change has altered our political
and economic landscape beyond recognition, and perhaps beyond salvation.
Our bankrupt Afghan policy is just one result of a single-point agenda.
The face of the Taliban is our face too. The dangerous sectarian militias
that are determined to drag us back to the medieval era are Zia's
political offspring. Who else is responsible for declaring interest rates
un-Islamic, thus driving away whatever little foreign investment that
might otherwise come to Pakistan? While most of these problems are peculiar
to Pakistan, the fact is that world-wide, there is a conflict between the
perceived dictates of our faith and the demands of modernization and
rationality. For centuries, Muslim rulers have been unwilling to provide
the space and freedom needed for free thought to flourish, exercising
tight control over intellectuals and teachers. This is why there is such
little creative activity in the Muslim world. We have stifled ourselves
with rigid rules about what is prohibited: instead of leaving it to the
Maker to deal with transgressions in the next world, our leaders and
mullahs insist on doing His job in this world according to their narrow,
joyless interpretation of the faith. One logical outcome of this system is that
it has marginalized half the population of the Muslim world. Despite
liberal scholars who insist that Islam does not require women to be locked
up, the reality is that in most Muslim countries, the role of women in
public life is very limited. The enrolment figures for school-age girls
are low, and job opportunities for women are generally limited as compared
to those available for men. Low literacy figures among women are
eventually reflected in poorly educated children, lack of hygiene, high
population growth and a backward society. There was a recent survey of university
graduates among different communities in Britain. Interestingly, over 20%
of all Indians are graduates whereas the figure for both Pakistanis and
Bangladeshis is 11%. Another study looked at family income levels in
various ethnic groups, and it was found that the figure for Indians was
much higher than for Pakistani families because in the former, both
husbands and wives worked while among Pakistanis, the wives tended to stay
at home. With a higher disposable income, Indian parents can afford to
give their children a better education and a better start. Although many of these facts and arguments have been taken at random, they would make a good starting point for General Musharraf if he really wants to study the reasons for the weakness he sees in the Muslims world today. |