US-Afghan war:
watershed in Islam's evolution
It is ironic that the fundamentalist caricature of Islam, that paints modernity as sinful, should be using the unbelievers' tools of violence, say Swami Agnivesh and Rev Valson Thampu, in the first of their two-part series on why Islam must engage with modernity
New Delhi, November 27
General Pervez Musharraf is carving out a place in the sun for himself. Future historians of Islam could profile him as a gambler in Islam's transition from a negative to a positive engagement with the challenge of modernity. The truth that stands out of the mammoth suffering of Muslims around the world is that they hurt themselves by beating back the waves of reform that leaders like the Shah of Iran and Nasser of Egypt tried to usher in.
The fact that bigots like Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and Mullah Omar in Afghanistan prevailed over their progressive rivals is a comment on the mindset shaped over the decades on the anvil of Islamic literalism. Contemporary developments cry out for a realistic reassessment of the popular religiosity that the custodians of Islam, if not of the Quran, are keen to foster.
Arguably, shutting one's mind to the claims and currents of the times is no proof of the intellectual or spiritual vitality of a people. The religious elite, in every religion and every age, has enjoyed the exclusive right to define and direct the religiosity of their people. As is to be expected, this is done necessarily with a view to reinforcing their own class interests. It is an irresistible temptation for the power-wielders of the world to turn their supporters into unthinking and ardent devotees, the substance of whose devotion can be directed at will. Seen from this perspective, the spread of rationality, free thinking, and intellectual objectivity are unwelcome intruders. It is this that delays the engagement between Islam and the rational forces of modernity to a greater extent than has been the case with most other religions.
This is not to argue that everything about modernity is rational or desirable. Modernity itself was turned into a religion of sorts: the religion of the materialistic world, with all the aberrations that necessarily go with it. Modernity is a freckled interplay of light and darkness, making it easy for those who wish to demonise it by focusing only on its hedonistic and narcissistic faces. This enabled the likes of Khomeini and Mullah Omar to evoke an atavistic fear of modernity in their followers. And this, in spite of the historical truth that the spread of Islamic culture mediated the dawn of modernity in Europe from its Greco-Roman roots. Islam embodies, despite its recently acquired propensity to breed Khomeinis and Omars, a rational religious outlook.
The interesting thing, though, is that the engagement between Islam and modernity is underway already. The material tools and weapons of Islamic fundamentalism are borrowed entirely from technology, which is the faceless god of modernity. The image of terrorists flying commercial aircrafts into the trade towers in New York bristles with this symbolic irony. Only the proverbial fundamentalist hypocrisy can live at peace with the glaring self-contradiction of fighting holy wars using the weapons developed by the infidels, the spread of whose demonic culture is assumed to spell doom to one's God and religion.
The irony in this scenario is this: it is perfectly legitimate for Islam, in its fundamentalist caricature, to welcome the means and tools of violence afforded by modernity, whereas it is sinful to accept what is positive in it. The self-appointed, bigoted saviours of Allah are allergic to modernity's insistence on human rights and dignity, free thinking and free movements, progress, equality and human welfare. It is quite comfortable, though, in putting up with mounting human suffering, poverty, violation of human rights, illiteracy, injustice and backwardness.
It is time this hypocrisy is seen for what it is. Look at the oil-rich Sheikdoms in the Middle East, who compete among themselves in displaying their zeal for Islam. The Sheik of Abu Dhabi in UAE, for example, began to build a mosque recently that would have surpassed its rival in Mecca. This was opposed by his Saudi counterpart, whose will has prevailed in the matter, causing enormous confusion and loss of money. For all the religious fervour professed, what one sees in the Middle Eastern cities is not Islamic austerity, but western consumerism at its zenith. But for the innumerable mosques that dot these cityscapes, everything about them is awash with the culture of the infidels. Islam's engagement with modernity is today confined strictly to consumerism. This suits the interests of the rulers. What is far more beneficial to the well-being of their subjects, though, is a positive engagement with the humanistic ideals and arrangements of modernity.
Afghanistan could prove to be a watershed in the historical evolution of Islam by compelling a re-examination of the strategy, so far, of unthinking negativity to whatever is modern. Events since September 11 have exposed the deep fissures on the façade of pan-Islamic solidarity upon which Osama bin Laden, like Saddam a decade ago, staked his life. The fast-developing scenario in Afghanistan proves that the challenge of modernity cannot be met with a mediaevalist mindset, even if you have the destructive weapons of modernity.
The standoff in Afghanistan is not between Christianity and Islam, but between the progressive and the regressive mindsets. It is irreligious to lend the legitimacy of religion to a retrograde project that drags the people back to mediaevalism. The religious task is not to put the clock back, but to infuse every society with the values necessary to safeguard its health and maximize the welfare of its people. A religion that seeks to anchor a people in the past and cripple their capacity to live effectively in the present condemns itself to irrelevance.
One of the perennial traits of the religious outlook, when it is uninformed by spirituality, is the lack of objectivity. The custodians of religion tend to take everyone else on their own terms. The Sangh Parivar's arbitrary assumptions about Ayodhya are a case in point. So also, Musharraf's insistence that there should be no bombing in Afghanistan during the holy month of Ramadan. Does he want the bombing to stop because, war being unholy, is unwelcome in the holy month?
If war is unholy, how can any war be holy for those who are outside of one's own religious fold? If some wars can be holy, and every group has the right to decide arbitrarily what is holy and what is not, what is there to prevent the Americans from claiming that they too are waging a holy war: the war of "enduring justice" diplomatically re-christened "war on terrorism"? If the Americans deem their enterprise in Afghanistan to be "holy", is not "holy month" the best time for them to fight it to the finish?
It is not our brief here to argue the legitimacy of any bombing, much less the bombing of the poor people of Afghanistan, irrespective of Ramadan. It is not clear to us at all how a bomb is more welcome outside of the Ramadan days to its victims. We only wish to argue that in an increasingly globalising world, no group can continue to impose its own exclusive norms and priorities on others. The call to call off bombing in the holy month is not made any more credible by shooting Christian worshippers on Sunday, their holy day. Apparently, those who burst into the Church on that fateful Sunday morning and massacred the innocents there were also pious Muslims: pious at least according to the bin Laden version of Islam. |
