History's hard lessons
Op-Ed from the Pakistani Dawn News Service
dawn.com
By Irfan Husain
If I were to get a dollar for every lesson Muslim leaders had failed to learn over the years, I would be a rich man today.
Time and again in Islamic history, leaders have refused to draw the obvious conclusions from events and their subjects have paid a heavy price for their stupidity. But instead of penalizing their rulers, they have blamed everybody else but those directly responsible for their misfortunes.
This gullibility among the ruled, combined with the cynicism of their rulers, has produced a seemingly unending series of man-made and entirely avoidable disasters spanning centuries that led inexorably to the Gulf War a decade ago, as well as the current situation in Afghanistan.
One problem of course is that Muslim societies have traditionally been ruled by despots who have surrounded themselves with sycophants. Even today, democracies in the Islamic world can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Under such autocratic rule, decision-making is usually highly personalized and hence whimsical.
This leadership style leads to the selection of unqualified and unsuitable individuals for the top slots in the bureaucracy as well as the defence forces. When nepotism is rampant, talent and intelligence are discounted; officers picked for their family ties and personal loyalty are unlikely to offer independent advice that may be unpopular with their patron.
You do not have to be a management guru to see that this administrative model is a recipe for disaster, and so it has proved to be for centuries. Although this system also prevailed in the West, it was discarded in favour of democracy and meritocracy which were found to be much more efficient and flexible in running modern societies and economies.
Yet Muslim states have copied only the trappings of democracy, rarely its essence. Arab countries hold farcical one-party elections in which the dictator of the day wins a 99 per cent majority, leaving outsiders wondering about the fate of the dissenting one per cent.
When personal preferences and prejudices rule the destiny of millions, institutions cannot develop and flourish. Leaders like the Colonel Qadhafi can bankrupt his oil-rich, under-populated nation, subject his people to repression for three decades, and still be admired by Muslims across the world. Saddam Hussein can invade Iran without provocation and fight a bloody war that bled both nations white over ten years without protest from the Islamic world. Then the same tyrant can invade Kuwait, triggering the Gulf War and the subsequent sanctions that have devastated his country, and still be regarded a hero from Morocco to Malaysia. Incidentally, he runs one of the most vicious police states in the world, but one doesn't hear of Muslims demonstrating against him.
Another case in point is the on-going American bombing in Afghanistan. Here is one of the poorest countries in the world, ravaged by years of invasion, civil war and drought , but nonetheless takes on the most powerful state the world has ever seen. Had the Afghan cause been just, this defiance would have evoked our admiration and sympathy.
However, all this death and destruction has been invited for the sake of Osama bin Laden, a terrorist who did not have the courage to either give himself up or commit suicide to save his hosts from the devastation they are now being subjected to. At school, it was considered honourable to step forward and accept one's medicine like a man when the entire class was threatened with collective punishment if the guilty party did not confess to his crime. But in this case, bin Laden too has joined the pantheon of heroes of the Islamic world.
One problem with all three examples given here is that very few of our despots understand the realities of power in the modern world. In a recent article called "It's the daisy-cutter, stupid!", Kamran Shafi made the point that the Taliban had been routed by the sheer weight of the firepower unleashed on them by the Americans. While this is obvious to most of us, there are still many Muslims here and elsewhere who feel it is somehow 'cowardly' for the Americans not to commit their ground troops to fight the Taliban, relying instead on cruise missiles and B-52s.
Indeed, our ex-spymaster, the (mercifully) retired General Hameed Gul, referred to American troops as "cream puff soldiers." What these latter-day Saladins fail to understand is that military strategy has changed with the induction of the new technologies, and it would be irresponsible for a modern commander to risk his soldiers where he can get the same job done by planes flying at 20,000 feet above the ground. Both Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar are too ignorant of these realities to comprehend that they simply cannot withstand the storm of steel and fire a modern superpower can unleash.
Ignorance is at the root of Muslim weakness and decline today. There exists a fundamental contradiction between the dictates of despotism and those of modernism: Muslim rulers risk being unseated if their subjects are educated in the modern sense of the word. Hence they are willing to accept and even encourage the setting up of madressahs where only the scriptures are taught.
However, even where modern institutions have been established, students are not encouraged to question and criticize the status quo. although some of them have been the centres of protest, they are not centres of creative research: for this, students have to go to western universities.
Thus, the Muslim world has lost some of its finest minds as it cannot furnish them with the tools or the intellectual environment they need. This brain-drain in turn feeds into the stagnation and torpor that characterize the Muslim world today.
Even in a country like Pakistan where, thanks to its colonial heritage, there is a constant demand for democracy despite its repeated bouts of military rule, there is a sizable section of the population that is out of touch with reality.
Even educated people (or specially educated people) view modernity and secularism with grave suspicion. They seek to make a clear distinction between their faith and what they see as western values. For them, reason and rationality are in conflict with the fundamentals of religion.
Indeed, if they take the scriptures literally, they may well be right. But even in secular Muslim countries like Iraq and Libya, despotism has marginalized and isolated them to the point where, despite their vast oil wealth, they are totally irrelevant to world affairs. Until Muslim societies can resolve all their many contradictions and learn the lessons they have ignored for centuries, they will deserve to be left behind as they rail against the injustice of history and the march of progress. |
