Survival of The Islamic Abdul Ghafur Muslim
Survival of The Islamic Abdul Ghafur Muslim
Survival of The Islamic Abdul Ghafur Muslim
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2.
Amir Ali Siddiqui, Islamic State, Karachi, 1975, pp.21-45. Also Sir Thomas W.
Arnold, The Caliphate, Oxford, 1924, pp.99-107.
In Europe, the Turkish fleet was destroyed in 1571 A.D. and again
annihilated by the Russians in 1770 A.D. The West then started slicing
up the Ottoman E mpire. France occupied Algiers in 1830 A.D. and
Tunisia in 1881 A.D. Italy captured Tripolitania in 1921 A.D. Likewise,
Palestine, Tranjordan and newly created country of Iraq went to the
U.K., Syria and Lebanon to France and Central Asian states to the USSR.
After the World War I, the Turks had to struggle hard for the protection
of their homeland. They fortunately succeeded but several other
countries of the Ummah were occupied by the West.
Western Domination
During the heyday of Western domination in India in the nineteenth
century, the Islamic Ummah endured a twofold assault: (a) political
subjugation and (b) alienation from its institutions and values. Islam was
belittled and ridiculed and was made to appear backward, barbaric and a
source of embarrassment. The Ummah was de-culturalized in such a way
as to ensure that it would not be able to recover and reorganize itself
again into a vital force. During its period of colonial control the West, in
the words of Arnold Toynbee, aspired towards nothing less than the
incorporation of all mankind in a single great society and the control of
everything on the earth, air, and sea. According to him:
The struggling Muslims are once more facing the West with their back to
the wall. But this time the odds are more heavily against them than they
were even at the most critical moments of the Crusades, for the West is
superior to them not only in arms but also in the techniques of economic
life on which military science ultimately depends.3
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who are even prepared to compromise their faith and betray communal
interests. The conduct of such people, however, stands challenged in
history.
6
7
Asif A.A. Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan Law, Oxford, 1949, p.xv. See also
Sylvia Haim Abolition of the Caliphate and its Aftermath in Sir Thomas W.
Arnold, The Caliphate, op.cit., pp.205-44. In March 1924, after the abolition of the
Caliphate in Turkey, Sharif Husayn of Mecca declared himself the Caliph of the
Muslims, and the representatives of Iraq, Hejaz, and East Jordan swore the oath of
allegiance to him but the Muslims of British India and Egypt rejected him as a
British agent. For details see A.L. Tibawi, Anglo-Arab Relations and the Question
of Palestine, London, 1977, pp.152-56.
Hamid Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought, London, 1982, pp.53-54.
C.C. Admass, Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform
Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad Abduh, Oxford, 1933, pp.259-65.
and blood thirsty nations created to destroy the Christian culture and
civilization.8 It suffered from atavistic fears which found expression as
follows:
Every Muslim regards himself as the citizen of an ideal state in which the
earth is the Lords and in the fullness thereof this state knits together all his
brethren in the faith, under obedience to the Imam-Khalifah, the successor
of the Prophet and the Vicegerent of God. The aspiration of Islam is to
dominate the World and make the precepts of the Shariah or sacred law
effective in every department of administration and the social life. To this
end the missionaries of faith labour unceasingly, and the Khalifah ought
year-by-year to wage Jihad against unbelievers until there is no
government on the earth, save that of Allah.9
9
10
11
Edward W. Said, Whose Islam?, in The New York, 29 Jan., 1979; Stephens S.
Rosenfeld, The Dark Forces of Islam in The Washington Post, 5 January 1979;
Geofferry Godsell, Militant Islam in The Christian Science Monitor, 14
December 1978; and Roy Vicker, Can Islam Adopt to Modernity? in The Wall
Street Journal, 24 January, 1979.
Arnold, op.cit., pp.182-83; also see R. Rhodes, ed., Imperialism and
Underdevelopment, New York, 1978.
Abdul Hamid Ahmad Abu Sulayman, The Islamic History of International
Relations: Its Relevance, Past and Present, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis (University
of Pennsylvania, 1973), pp.180-92.
Ibid.
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12
13
14
The Quran, 3: 159; 42: 38. Also see, Hamid Enayat, op.cit.,
Ahmad Hassan, Doctrine of Ijma in Islam, Islamabad, 1976.
The Quran, 29:25: 64: 204; 59.
Muslims.15 Owing to the fact that the final interpretation of law and its
application and administration were left in human hands, a broad range
of legal authority was bestowed upon the Caliph. He was assigned the
responsibility for performing two inseparable function: (a) to safeguard
the purposes of Shariah, and (b) to manage the economic political
affairs of the state.16
The edifice of the Shariah was built on the notion of Maslahah.
This was elaborated by Imam Ghazali to include the fundamental rights
of the citizens as enunciated in the Quran and the Sunnah. It further
implied that these were the goals of preservation and protection of the
basic public interests. Such public interests included: first, freedom in the
choice of religion and its practice as required by the Quran. Second, the
protection of life and the preservation of human dignity, which implied
freedom of action, of opinion and of thought, and that mans faculty of
thought may not be curtailed or influenced by any means. From this
derived the prohibition of liquor or drugs. Third, the guarantee of
procreation. This involves family, affirms marriage, rearing of children,
the prohibition of fornication and so forth. Fourth, the protection of the
individuals property, so as to forbid robbery and theft, and to
systematize transactions and dealings among people, to discourage
bribery, monopoly and aggression.17 The political concept of the
Caliphate is at variance with the concept of the theocratic state whose
main feature is a direct rule of God or gods.18 Malcom Kerr
interprets the nature of the Islamic political system as follows:
Juridically he (Caliph) is simply the legitimate ruler of the Muslim
Community, subject to a system of law. The community is therefore
governed by a nomocracy which, regardless of its religious origin, is still
the rule of law and not of a priestly class.19
Majid Khadduri also holds that the use of the term theocracy is
undesirable or even erroneous for the Islamic political system, and he
suggests that nomocracy is a more meaningful term, since it refers to a
political system based in a code of law believed to be of divine origin.20
15
16
17
18
19
20
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With the passage of time, the Quranic concept of state, which was
essentially republican, lost its essence as a doctrine. It degenerated into
an authoritarian system whereby the Caliph was designed as an absolute
sovereign by his predecessor, father or relative in the same dynasty.
Quite often, a ruler was installed by force and maintained by
oppression.21 The jurists, in their deviation from the original Islamic
concept based on the right of the Ummah to choose the Caliph, gave
justifications for the hereditary system on the grounds of political
necessity and fear of bloodshed. They defended the tyrant Caliph as
the lesser of two evils when the alternative was anarchy.
23
24
Abdur Razik Ali, Al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukum, Beirut, 1966, pp.74-79; also see note
12, above.
Cronin Bruce, The Paradox of Hegemony: Americas Ambiguous Relationship
with the United Nations, in European Journal of International Relations, Vol.7,
No.1, March 2001.
E. Charles Krauthammar, Unipolar Moment, in Foreign Affairs, Winter, 70, 1991.
S. Bromley, American Hegemony and World Oil: The History, The State System and
the World Economy, Oxford University Press, 1991, p.177.
25
26
27
28
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nation shall immediately put up for sale its social resources, government
owned industries and public infrastructure. International Monetary Fund
and World Bank call it privatization. If a weak nations economy is
going to succeed, its government will need to have strong ties with
successful multinational corporations for investment/loans and look
beyond the confusing demands of local people. It will have to create
favourable regulatory environments for the corporations and facilitate
their operations and profits with suitably constructed property
guarantees, tax cuts, labour laws, and police protections.
With the growth of the transnational corporations and trillions of
dollars in free market operations and free flow of capital, in relative
detachment from territorial jurisdiction, the sovereignty in the traditional
understanding accorded by the Peace Agreement of Westphalia executed
in 1648, have become wholly impracticable.
The multinational corporations can readily override state
sovereignty by frustrating a government, because they can easily relocate
production facilities and sales outlets to other jurisdictions if they find a
particular states regulations burdensome. Usually this threat alone is
sufficient to make a state amenable to submit before the demands of the
Corporations.
Globalization is a multifaceted phenomenon; its critical analysis
reveals that it involves a change at the level of production from tripartism
to global enterprise corporatism, enhancing productivity through the
intensification of work. Besides, it degenerates shared community
identities that can facilitate action in favour of a generic American mass
culture entailing an ideology of possessive individualism promulgated by
means of advertising and products of entertainment industry such as
television and movies. Consequently, the cultural imperialism is imposed
and the traditional family/community identities built around a shared
distinct cultural heritage are being supplanted by a nondescript American
(i.e., Mickey Mouse, McDonald) culture which promotes the ideology of
possessive individualism where an individual is seen as absolute natural
proprietor of his own capacities owing nothing to family and society. His
essence is freedom to use his capacities in search of satisfaction.
Freedom comes to be identified with domination over things.
The United States assumption that other people must become
Americanized is a bit of US arrogance. The idea that the people,
especially the Muslims, will give up their culture and civilization and
come to a single West-defined universal civilization is a disgrace in the
face of reality. What automatically counts for people, especially the
Muslims, is not political ideology or economic interests. Faith and
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family, blood and belief are what they identify with and what they will
fight and die for.
Tony Blair, while paying a bent kneed tribute to George Bush
Senior during a visit to his personal library, said:
We must go further than smashing unfriendly regimes and hunting infidels
into the ground. We must also ensure that the governments and populations
we allow to survive are convinced that our way is the High Waywe want
Muslim college kids and school children on our side before they are even
aware that the war of values has begun. We want them intoxicated.32
Conclusion
The Islamic Ummah is divided into various independent sovereign
states. Under the Peace Agreement of Westphalia executed in 1648, all
states were accorded exclusive right to rule over their territories. Rich or
poor they were equal in the eyes of the international law, free in dealing
with their national and international affairs, without overt interference by
other states. With the end of the Cold War in 1990, and disintegration of
the Soviet Union, however, this era has ended, making room for the new
World Order and globalization organized by the United States of
America. The paradigms of Globalization are to gradually transform the
whole world economically, politically and even culturally in the light of
the standards and values approved in the West, especially in the United
States of American.
32
33
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the poor and they must reflect a basic sense of decency and social justice
and must be arrived at through a transparent democratic process. The
West has 800 million people while the East makes up almost 4.7 billion.
In the domain of national politics no western society would accept a
situation where 15 percent of its population legislates for the remaining
85 percent. This is exactly what the West is trying to do at the global
level. This is not fair by any standard and needs to be reconsidered.
Muslim participation in the New World Order is very low. They
appear to be observers and peripheral players. The fact that they are
divided castes doubt on their ability to participate as a significant entity
in the sphere of the world events and it is generally believed that only a
miracle can change them enough to be able to become equal partners in
the New World Order. So they stand to lose on the potential benefits of
Globalization. The main reason for their non-participation, in the opinion
of Professor Huntington, is the nature of their religious traditions, which
seem to show the energy of a resistance to globalization and
westernization.34 However, the Muslims themselves do not think so.
They believe that the process of Globalization is just another American
conspiracy to keep the Muslim world down. In the eyes of some critics,
this is, in effect, much worse than this. Much worse because
Globalization is not just thinking about Muslims alone. It has put every
country under pressure.35 Like the Muslim states, every other nation state
is worried about what the Wall Street institutions are going to do next.
Thus, it is not designed to keep down the Muslim stats alone.
If the Muslim states like to survive this deluge, they must build an
Islamic bridge to the train of Globalization, because if they failed to do
so, the train will leave without them.
The institution of Ijma plays an important role in the socioeconomic and political life of the Ummah. The real problem, however,
lies in the existing political conditions, and the consequent failure of the
decision makers to understand public opinion and surrender before it.
The rulers always patronized a selected group of the Ulama to approve
and sanction their socio-political decisions. They consider the opinion of
the Ulama as a consensus, whereas the fact is that they no longer
represent the mainstream of the Muslim intelligentsia and their
knowledge does not reflect the changes occurring in the modern world.
34
35
Samuel P. Huntington, If not Civilization? What? Paradigms of the Post Cold War
World, in Foreign Affairs, 1993, 72:5, p.186.
Agnes Heller, Cultural Memory, Identity and Civil Society, in International
Politics and Society, 2001, Vol.2, p.141.