Thursday, July 13, 2017

Political Islam and Its Proponents


A terrorist is not created in his mother’s womb. It takes an environment of hatred, a whole jungle of hatred-to bring him into existence. The present-day community of Muslims has unfortunately provided such an environment. How did this jungle of hatred grow? For one it has been cultivated by the extensive proliferation of a particular ideology among Muslims, a political interpretation of Islam, which offered Muslim the status of God’s vicegerents on earth with the right to rule the entire world on His behalf.

Islam was the leading civilization of the world in the period between the decline of ancient civilization and the ascent of modern European ones. But ultimately, western colonial powers established their dominance over the Muslim world; it was in reaction to his domination that political movements began to be launched in the name of Islam. The objective of these movements was to free Muslim countries from western rule and to re-establish Muslim rule.

It was Syed Jamaluddin Afghani, born in Iran in 1838, who probably developed the concept of Islamic nationalism for the first time. During his lifetime, the colonial expansion of the west was at its peak and almost the entire Muslim world had, directly or indirectly, come under its rule. Jamaluddin Afghani made it his mission to bring down the colonial system and restore the political power of Muslim nations. Towards this end, he launched the movement know as pan-Islamism. It aimed at bringing together the Muslims of entire world to form a united international power, which would defeat western nation and set the Muslim world free from their clutches.

Jamaluddin Afghani failed to achieve his political target, but what he did successfully was to show the seeds of hatred for western nations in Muslims minds all over the world. As a result, Muslims in general came to regard western nations as their enemies. Almost all the Muslim leaders of his time began to think in negative and political terms. The more prominent of these were Sayyid Qutb and Amir Shaqib Arsalan in the Arab World, Muhammad Iqbal and Sayyed abul Ala Maududi  in the Indian subcontinent, and later ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.

Initially, the movement focused on the expulsion of western forces from the Muslims world. More appropriately, it was an initiative to gain political freedom. Thus, in the times of Afghani, this movement was more political than religious in nature, which its slogan being the east for easterners’’.

After Afghani, this revolutionary movement entered another phase. Now it was given an ideological form. The movement, which had been described in communal terms (with reference to the global Muslim community), was now given an Islamic hue. An attempt was made to Islamize their communal thinking by developing a complete ideology based on the political interpretation of Islam. If earlier the thinking had been that the western nations were usurpers and that a restitution of Muslims’political  rights must be demanded from them in the next phase ideologists developed the theory that Islam had a system covering the whole of human life and that this include politics. The Muslims were, therefore, duty-bound to capture political power b y force so that Islam might be implemented as a total system. The promoters of this movement held that so long as Islam was not adopted by the believers in toto, as a complete system, their faith would not be acceptable to God. It following that bringing about a political revolution became a binding obligation, like prayers and fasting.

In this second phase, two Muslim leaders figured most prominently: the Egyptian intellectual Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966) and Sayyed Abul Ala maududi (d.1979), a Muslim ideologue from the Indian subcontinent. Both these leaders found themselves in a very favorable environment- an environment  that now made it possible for their books to be translated into many language and thus for their ideas to spread over almost the entire Muslim world. As a consequence, Muslims in almost all part of the globe were directly influenced by their political ideology. Some became actively involved, while the thinking of others, shaped by this ideology, centred on political Islam. All dreamed of the political glory of Islam.

This movement, designed to establish political Islam, gave rise to various other movements. Two of these movements grew in to prominence: all Ikhwan al –Muslimun, or the Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928 in the Arab world and the Jamat- e Islami established in 1941on the subcontinent. Both were highly organized movements and subsequently launched campaigns to establish Islamic rule in Muslim countries such as Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Tunisia and Malaysia.  

At first these movements sought to establish Muslim rule by spreading their ideology of political Islam. When they failed on this score, they started taking part in the national election in the countries here they were active. When they failed on this front too, they resorted to militancy. This political movement of the Muslims intensified in the latter half on the twentieth country. It was during these days that the Jews established their rule in Palestine in the name of Israel. Now Muslims believe that they Jews are rejected by God, while the Muslims themselves are the chosen people. So finding the dominance of the Jews over the Muslims intolerable, they made a frantic bid to obliterate the Jews from the face of the earth. The pro-Islam movement of the first half of the twentieth century ultimately turned into an anti-Jewish movement in the second half century.

Events have demonstrated that, in spite of making every conceivable effort, Muslims have failed in their campaign against the Jews. On every front, right from the united nation to the Aqsa Mosque of Jerusalem, they have had total defeat inflicted upon them. It is the ensuing build-up of a defeatist mentality which has culminated perforce in the phenomenon of ‘Islamic terrorism’. Though ostensibly aimed at re-establishing Islamic rule. The political Islam movement actually grew as a political reaction to the circumstances in which Muslims found themselves at that particular point in time. Its inspiration and its impact were totally negative. The movement was the result of anti- western rather than pro-Islam feelings, and for precisely this reason it rapidly turned violent.

According to Islam, a truly Islamic movement arise out of feelings of benevolence for all the humanity. Its target being neither land nor power, it is always carried out through peaceful means. It never adopts violence. If Muslims movements of the modern age opted for the way of extremism, it was because they were not genuinely Islamic in nature. The truth is that these Muslim social movements, which had only the community agenda in mind, adopted the name of Islam purely as a means of self- Justification. If you read the Quran, nowhere in it will you find any mention of ‘political Islam’. They Quran contains neither information nor injunction which could lead to the setting up of a political system. The eighteenth- century French thinker Rousseau, who was greatly concerned with the human condition, wrote a treatise called the social contract (1762). He opened his book with this arresting statement: man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.’

This is the language of a political book, a book which was to contribute to the ideas and policies of the leaders of the French revolution and which ultimately gained worldwide currency. But if you read the Quran, you will see that it begins not with a diatribe against human inequality with its implied criticism of wrong governance, but simply with praises of God, and it ends with the necessity to seek refuge in God against Satan. In the Quran and the Hadith, there is no mention of the system of state. Nor is there any mention of revolt against nay existing system neither is there any indication as to how a political ruler or khalifah is to be appointed or selected. No such principles are set forth in Islam, neither from an ideological nor from a practical point of view. In short, it is clear that no aspect of political Islam is dealt with anywhere in the Quran and the Hadith.   
At more than one place in the Quran we are told what the Prophet’s tasks were in accordance with the divine plan. These were recitation of the verses of the Quran; purification of man; teaching of the scriptures; and teaching of wisdom. In none of the verses are we told that the task of the Prophet was to establish Islamic rule in the world. Such verses of the Quran as presented by the champions of political Islamic in support of their cause were distorted to serve their own ends.


The truth is that giving a political interpretation to Islam is a despicable act and in no way serves the higher aims of the religion.

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