|
submit
articles |
| Muslim Psyche: Reclaiming
our Faith Irfan Husain Not surprisingly, the man who attempted to
blow up the American Airlines jet over the Atlantic last week has turned
out to be a Muslim. According to Mr Abdul Haqq Baker, chairman of the
Brixton mosque which was attended by Richard Reid, this young British
subject had been converted to 'a less tolerant strand of Islam' by a
jihadi group. As I write this from London, newspapers are
full of speculation about his motive, background and political
connections. One thing is certain, and that is the fact that he attempted
to bring down a plane together with its crew and passengers. Again one
wonders what kind of rage drives relatively well-off young men to commit
atrocities of this nature. For a Palestinian to commit suicide in an
attempt to strike back against his country's occupiers and tormentors is
more comprehensible as he has so few options. But for a Briton to be
similarly driven raises questions about the nature of the Islam that is
being taught to the younger generation. Clearly, its political content far
outweighs its spiritual element. The poetry and symbolism are marginalized
as heavy emphasis is placed on jihad, martyrdom and florid descriptions of
the joys that await a martyr in paradise. This indoctrination - it can
hardly be called belief - has no place for love, tolerance and respect for
other faiths. It is a bleak, monochromatic and joyless religion that is
far removed from the Islam that was revealed by the Almighty. But even the faith that is followed by the
majority of Muslims around the world has given rise to certain problems
that need to be examined and discussed. Specifically, we need to ask why
Muslim societies have provided such barren soil for democracy. In a recent
survey conducted by Freedom House, an independent monitor of political
rights, it was found that over 75 per cent of 145 non-Muslim countries are
democracies to varying degrees. However, only 11 out of the 47 nations
that are predominantly Muslim can claim to be democracies. In actual fact,
only one Muslim state is genuinely democratic, and that is Mali (Mali?!).
After Mali come Bangladesh, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait (!), Turkey and
Morocco. Interestingly, out of the ten least free
countries in the world according to this survey, seven are Muslim:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Turkmenistan.
Depressingly, instead of agitating for greater freedom, young people in
Muslim countries are going in the opposite direction by demanding stricter
adherence to the letter of the Islamic law, thereby insisting on a narrow
observance of ritual and a denial of rationalism and secularism, the two
preconditions for democracy. Mercifully, these voices are relatively few
in number, but they drown out the voices of sanity and reason by their
shrillness and their claim to the fundamentalist high ground. Indeed, for
the rest of the world, these people have become the face of Islam with
their contorted, bearded faces spouting hate-filled slogans. For readers who might feel this is an
unfair portrayal of the Muslim world, here is another statistic to conjure
with: three out of every four refugees today are Muslims fleeing their
countries for either political or economic reasons. Granted that
Afghanistan has skewed the picture with its millions of refugees who have
found shelter in neighbouring countries, but how are we to explain the
flood of North African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Muslims who have
flooded Europe and North America? Most of these millions have made homes
elsewhere to escape the poverty, poor governance and lack of liberty that
have come to characterize and define the Islamic world. Recognizing that they are in a small
minority and will therefore never be voted into power, extremists condemn
democracy as being 'un-Islamic'. They seek, instead, to influence the
agenda of repressive regimes, much as Pakistan's religious parties
supported Zia and thereby rewrote our laws, pushing the legal system
several centuries back. Saudi Arabia has been exporting an extreme Wahabi
strand of the faith for decades. No Muslim country today serves as a
beacon for democracy, tolerance and progress, but several compete for
being leading exemplars of repression, intolerance and backwardness. So in a sense, the two broad movements that
today influence the Muslim psyche can be categorized as a suffocatingly
anti-progressive tendency and a shrill, murderous radicalism. These
competing dogmas have effectively squeezed the political space available
for a debate on the need for liberalism and democracy. The radicals want to usher in an Islamic
revolution that would sweep away the decadent regimes that today rule much
of the Muslim world, but instead of replacing them with modern
democracies, these zealots would install even more ferocious and
repressive governments. In countries like Pakistan which (still) have some
democratic traditions and aspirations, this competition to be holier than
the others has moved the political agenda and rhetoric further to the
right than ever before. The effect of this negative portrayal of
Islam abroad has been devastating for those millions of Muslims who have
been trying to make a new beginning for themselves and their families in
the West. Understandably, people are nervous about wanting to fly with
passengers who look even remotely 'Middle Eastern'. How many Western
businesses would today take the risk of hiring Muslims? While we may
complain of racism, the fact remains that in a competitive world, Muslims
will be at a disadvantage as long as their coreligionists loudly proclaim
their intention to destroy western institutions. As I have been arguing in these columns, there is a pressing need for a debate over the direction Islam has taken, not for the sake of Muslims who have left their homes, but in order to make sure that the next generation will not feel they have to leave to make a better life for themselves. http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/20011229.htm |