Afghanistan and Pakistan are the countries wherein this monster is all set to eat violently those who nurtured it for their own vested interests. This left doing politics, normal living, and meeting people all at risk. And thousands of children, the elderly, and young people have fallen victim to it.

Media and scholarly, academic reports reveal that Muslims living in the West too are now influenced by their preachers and imams. They have begun to believe in sectarian conflicts as well as emotional slogans like a revival of the old Caliphate. Amazingly, thousands of youth born and bred in the West were recruited or joined the forces of the fake Caliphate established by the notorious Abubakar Al-Baghdadi a decade ago?

Pakistan was created in the name of Islam, but what is the condition of Islamic ideology there? What is the sanctity of a human life? From time to time, a fanatic mob would rise, blaming a person for blasphemy. No matter whether he is a Muslim or non-Muslim, it would kill him in cold blood or often burn him alive. The police simply watch the spectacle, indeed, occasionally participate in the crime. Later, religious people would start justifying the heinous act by citing old jurists and their fatwas. And secularists and liberals would start condemning the act. The administration remains deaf and dumb. Judiciary very seldom takes suo motu cognizance. After a few days, the matter is normalised.  The cruel bloody mob then goes out in search of another prey. All businesses of life and religion continue to thrive!

The killing of the then Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer by his own official bodyguard a few years ago on fake charges of blasphemy is a case in point. The dastardly killer was then turned into a saint! The presumably educated advocates in Pakistani courts threw rose petals over him when he came to face the charges of murder. After his execution, his grave has been turned into a shrine. Thousands visit it regularly to pay their obeisance. What Fanaticism!

While the West is thinking of building colonies on Mars and China is conquering new vistas with AI, what is the favourite pastime of the great Muslim ulama, clergy and religious scholars of Pakistan and India, indeed even Bangladesh?  It is to make ordinary Muslims blindly believe in unverifiable predictions about the appearance of the supposed Imam Mahdi. These people are saying, day in and day out, particularly sice the genocide of Palestinians started, that Dajjal is about to come out and Mahdi has to appear and after that Jesus will come and the rule of Islam is just about to be established on the whole planet.

Religious Muslims are generally simple-minded and naive. They believe in these myths. They do not feel the need to move forward in the world. Our task should be to promote science and technology, indeed first create a scientific temperament among the rank and file of Muslims.

 History shows that this situation will finally lead to the point when the political leaders will have to resort to fighting the monster of their own making as Pakistan is compelled to do with the Taliban now. Muslim clergy and ulama in the Indian subcontinent must also repent and take a vow never to use religion for political purposes. If Muslims come to this point, they must put before them some hard facts to eradicate extremism from its foundation.

First, this demon of extremism did not come down from heaven directly. It is a cherished baby born of religious thought which is taught and studied in our religious schools and madrasas under different titles, such as the enforcement of Sharia, Jihad and eradication of infidelity, polytheism, apostasy, etc. Radicalised people and extremist movements draw inspiration from this traditional theology. They propagate it for their dastardly purposes. This prominent religious thought and its political interpretations popularly called Political Islam have been logically criticized by some thinkers and brilliant minds of Islam like Maulana Waheeduddin Khan and Javed Ahmad Ghamdi. Had there not been stirring uproar, protests, and threats from ulama in the face of scientific reasoning, certainly the thought of these thinkers would have changed people’s minds and popular narratives.

Now to counter the religious radicalism in Muslim societies we have to develop a counter-narrative to the propagated traditional religious thought. Still, it is unfortunate and tragic for Muslim societies that violence and extremism prevail to protect religion and preserve Sharia.

Unfortunately, the culture of disagreement with politeness and respect has not yet developed. These situations require us to be sensitive to freedom of opinion in religious ideas and thinking. And to be frank, our clerics and religious preachers exert a policy of pressure to prevent the freedom to express free opinion. If they want to reveal the error to those who disagree with them, they can do so in an open way by resorting to the weapon of knowledge and reasoning. The world of knowledge does not accommodate compulsion, protests, uproar, and tyranny. It is a counter-narrative of popular religious thought presented by the likes of Mr. Ghamidi that alone can reform the situation in the Muslim community, not propaganda of secularism or anti-religionism. Iqbal the poet and philosopher tried a century ago to draw our attention to the same truth in his lectures on the need for reconstruction of religious thought that he delivered in Aligarh and elsewhere. Sir Syed and his school of thought made the same effort.

Second, in secular fields, we do not allow someone to establish institutions to graduate children and boys as doctors, engineers, or skilled in any division and department of science and arts. This cannot be done without giving Muslim children general education for twelve years or so. But children and young people are trained as religious scholars in madrasas and centres of religious learning. These madrasas close the door of modern learning on them altogether and play with their future lives. Some of them could have been doctors, some of them engineers, poets, writers, photographers, etc.. But these madrasas, regardless of their aptitude, taste, inclinations, or qualifications, make great efforts to make them religious scholars only and deprive them of all opportunities to choose an area of science and art of their own choice.  They cut their ties to society and made them aliens in their own societies by depriving them of general public education for twelve years. Therefore, it has become necessary to prohibit religious schools, like all other institutes of specialized education, from interfering with a student without giving him general education up to 12 grade.

We can say with confidence that this one step alone will change the current situation created by the institutes of religious education. As Founder-Editor of NewAgeIslam.com, Mr. Sultan Shahin told the UN Human Rights Council at Geneva some time ago, madrasa education is the biggest violation of the human rights of Muslim children. Every child has the right to acquire general education before going in  for specialisation in any field. If we don’t give our children medical or engineering education at the age of five, then why burden them with theology at such a tender age. Young children and adolescents need general education first. They should have the choice to go in for any specialisation they want.

Thirdly, it is necessary to end the dominance of clerics and preachers of hate in masjids and mosques. They generally use Friday pulpits for their vested interests in Muslim societies. If we don’t do this, we cannot escape extremism. Who does not know that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) established a Sunnah regarding the Friday prayer? It was that the Imam (head of government) or whoever he appoints is entitled to lead the Friday prayer and deliver the sermon. No one else is permitted to use this pulpit unless they have this specific instruction from the ruler.

However, throughout the decadent age, Muslim monarchs typically lacked the necessary tools to perform this function. They gave the Friday pulpits to the clergy and Ulama. Since then, the Ulama and clergy have gained such clout that they utilize Jumma (Friday) sermons and mosque pulpits to push their objectives and vested interests in Muslim societies.

This has resulted in deepening the sectarian lines. Now separated along sectarian and Fiqhi lines,  in lieu of God’s mosques we have Ahle Hadis mosques and the Hanaf mosques, Deobandi mosques, and the Barelvi mosques, etc. They ought to be God’s mosques alone wherein worship of Allah is practiced.

 Mosques are now becoming hubs for extremism and sectarianism. The mosque must be run by a collective management of Muslims and should not be used by individuals, movements, or organizations to spread a particular theological or political message. Mosques are houses of God. They must not be transformed  into sites of conflict and disunity among Muslims. They should never be used to radicalise Muslims for a particular purpose. This is an essential step.

Research Associate with Centre for Promotion of Educational and Cultural Advancement of Muslims of India, AMU Aligarh.

Courtesy: New Age Islam

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Iqbal greatly influenced Muslim thought in India and Iran as well. One of the main ideologues of 1979’s so-called Islamic revolution of Iran, Ali Shariati was very impressed by Iqbal’s Persian poetry and thought. Pakistanis wrongly and disputedly call him the ideological and visionary father of their nation.

Iqbal remained in the West and experienced first-hand the merits and drawbacks of Western civilisation.

Iqbal inaccurately prophesied the early death of European civilisation, as you can see in the following couplet, and was not it a self-deceit or illusion!

تہماری تہذیب خودآپ اپنے ہاتهون سے خودکشی کرے گی

جوشاخ نازک پہ آشیانہ بنے گا ناپائدارہوگا  

(Your civilization will commit suicide by its dagger,

for, the house built on a fragile foundation is always weak and frail.)

Though Iqbal was a thinker and a versatile philosopher yet in his political views he seems to me, tending to be a romantic and unrealistic person. He had a nostalgic approach to the obsolete Caliphate system as he was a firm believer in an autocratic rule. We can cite his famed couplet here:

چاک کردی ترک ناداں نے خلافت کی قبا  سادگی اپنوں کی دیکھ اوروں کی عیاری بھی دیکھ

تا خلافت کی بنا دنیامیں ہوپھراستوار           لاکہیں سے ڈھونڈکراسلاف کا قلب وجگر

(The ignorant Turk has torn the mantle of the Caliphate, look at the simplicity of Muslims and see too the cunning of the others., bring forth the hearts of the ancestors from anywhere, so that the foundations of the Caliphate can be rebuilt again.)

It must be admitted that there is aversion towards God and dislike of traditional religion in the West, the discourse of atheism is more powerful than that of religion. Atheists use Darwinian evolutionary theory to support and cement their ideology of negation of a supernatural being or creator of the Universe. Nudity and obscenity are on the rise. But there is no coercive aspect in it. That is why it fosters a culture of free thinking. And this freedom as summum bonum is a great source of strengthening Western civilization.

Iqbal had read the West closely and made sharp comments on Western civilization. But the same Iqbal also remarked:

نے ز از رقص زنان بے حجاب                                            قوتِ مغرب نہ ازچنگ و رباب

 ازہمیں آتش چراغش روشن است                                     قوتِ مغرب از علم و فن است

   (The power of the West does not come from the harp and musical tools and not from the dance of naked women. Rather the strength of the West comes from knowledge and art, their lamp is enlightened from this fire.)

We see that Iqbal and his staunch follower Maulana Maududi were wrong in the assessment of Western civilization. Though Iqbal was a bit honest in confessing and giving some credit to this civilization as we quoted above. Yet in his Urdu poetry he treated Western civilization with utmost bitterness and unusual harshness as once he remarked:

        اٹھاکرپھینک دوباہرگلی میں                   نئی تہذیب کے انڈے ہیں گندے        

(The eggs of the new civilization are dirty so throw them out in the street)

Iqbal was anti-democracy; he mocked with this polity by saying:

جمہوریت وہ طرزحکومت ہے کہ جس میں                       بندوں کوگناکرتے ہیں تولانہیں کرتے

(Democracy is a form of government in which the people are counted and not weighed)

How many rivers of dust and blood has the West passed through, to reach modern democracy? How many sacrifices have its thinkers, artists, writers, and scientists made to get rid of the clutches of the tyrannical monarchy and the oppressive church, regardless of all this, democracy is a devilish curse for Iqbal, what a surprise!

There is a poem in his anthology: Iblis ki Majlis Shura (Consulting body of Satan) in which Iblis(Satan) tells one of his disciples that democracy is our creation:

ہم نے خودشاہی کوپہنایاہے جمہوری لباس               توسمجھتاہے کہ آزادی کی ہے نیلم پری

(We have worn the kingship a democratic dress, you believe that it is a beautiful Fairy of freedom!)

In religious circles of Muslim masses, Iqbal has been received like a prophet, that is why, even though there are several academies and organisations in Pakistan and India specifically dedicated to studying Iqbal, it is unacceptable to criticise or examine his ideas. Iqbal’s poetry was translated into Arabic too, and through it one can trace his impact on Arab scholars and thinkers.

No one can deny that the Western civilization still is a dominant civilization of our times. It is still flourishing and a leading force in the world of economy and global polity and culture. Notwithstanding the big clams of Islamists and many predictions makers for the West to be declining very soon, there is no big sign of its nearby fall or decay. Contrasting of it the house of Islam is in disorder, as many Muslim countries are always fighting each other in Asia and Africa as well. Some Mid-Eastern countries and small sheikhdoms in recent times have made a tremendous developmental drive on materialistic grounds. For example, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain Qatar, et al are witnessing an upsurge in development, prosperity, and emergence of big malls and skyscrapers, etc.

Yet, this phenomenal growth and developmental model is also based on a Western capitalist model not on an Islamic model.

Compare that to the occurrence of radicalization, religious dogmatism, sectarian conflict, rising intolerance, animosity towards others, and widespread religiosity devoid of a genuine spiritual or religious sense. People more frequently follow their traditional tribal cultural ethos and rituals in many Muslim cultures and refer to them as Islamic traditions, like in Afghanistan. Many YouTubers and clerics are naively converting people to false beliefs like the return of a Messiah, Mahdi, or the emergence of a monster called Dajjal, etc. Contrast this with the most palpable civilizational values of the West such as honesty, justice, equality, valuation of merit, respect of other’s faith, rule of law, freedom of expression, freedom of faith, and of course dignity of humans. These values are now very deeply rooted in Western societies and are playing a pivotal role in preventing that civilization from falling.

For Maulana Maududi, who never travelled to the West and only visited America to meet his son, a doctor there, for treatment of his terminal illness, Iqbal served as an inspiration. Maulana Maududi produced a body of anti-Western writing unmatched by anybody in the modern age. He sees nothing positive in the West. He published many books since he was a skilled, eloquent, and rapid Urdu prose writer. And because there are most contemporary educated people in Jamaat-e-Islami, the hatred of the West was instilled in his audience and readers and through them to general Muslims like poison. Similarly, Syed Qutb was influenced by Maulana Maududi in the Arab world. Although he stayed in America for two years on an education tour he also saw nothing but very negative aspects of Western society as he mentioned later in his famous memoir اميركة التي رائيت (The America that I Saw). After his return and joining the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood, he lashed out against the West in his powerful Arabic prose.

Both were followed by more rigid and narrow-minded Maulvies, second-hand writers, columnists, preachers, and scholars. The result was a severe kind of hatred and disgust, blended with ignorance, jealousy, and enmity toward West permeating the Muslim mindset. This enmity and negative mentality spread throughout the Muslim societies around the world.

The Islamic world was ruled by European imperialism when Iqbal composed his poetry and Maududi wrote prose, thus it is but logical that their ideas were widely embraced. After that time, however, their glorification should have been stopped and their ideas ought to have been subjected to a critical and impartial examination.

A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Dr. Mohammad Ghitreef is a Research Associate with the Centre for Promotion of Educational and Cultural Advancement of Muslims of India, AMU, Aligarh.

Courtesy: New Age Islam

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