Dialogue within the Islamic World: Asia, Africa, the Muslim Diaspora ::

By Shireen M Mazari

Paper prepared for conference on
“Territoriality and Extra-Territoriality: Instruments for Changing Attitudes”
6th-7th - March, 2004
Venue: Four Seasons Hotel, Amman, Jordan

Post-9/11 has brought to the fore all the contradictions and conflicts that have underlain the disunity of the Muslim World. With talk of a clash of civilisations quite erroneously – given that Islam embraces many civilisations – centring on Islam versus the West, the Muslim World has shown an increasing tendency to retreat into a defensive mode. This has been especially so because the whole issue of terrorism has been confined only to the religious framework of Islam. In the process, the polarisation between Muslims and the rest is increasing not only in the form of adverse interstate behaviour but also in the form of hostility between Muslims in the non-Muslim states – both at the level of civil societies and the state.

There has been some recognition of this growing cleavage and leaders of the Muslim World have led the way in calling for a dialogue between the Muslim World and the West. In fact, this dialogue has an institutional framework at many levels. However, 9/11 has shown the paucity of innovative thought and debate within the Islamic World, with extremists increasingly usurping the intellectual and political space not only within Muslim states but also within the Muslim Diaspora – especially as the negative perceptions of a hostile West increase. Therefore, there is a need to have an extensive dialogue within the Islamic World on two simultaneous and parallel tracks:

I – Introspection – examining our own states and societies in the context of the following:

Is Islam itself a religion of enlightenment? Yes it is. So how to reassert the enlightenment of the religion with its emphasis on debate and knowledge-seeking and tolerance. At present there is a struggle for the essence or soul of Islam between the purists or fundamentalists and the modernists. So far the violent extremists, who attract the media attention, are basically in conflict with the majority of Muslims divided along a spectrum from conservatives to reformists. These extremists or obscurantists exist in all religions and are equally militant in seeking implementation of their agendas. From the “born again” Christians of the US including the neoconservatives (remember General Boykin declaring that the Christian god was more powerful than the Muslim god!); to the Zionists; to the Hindu extremists of the RSS and its affiliates who not only raised a mosque to the ground in India but also carried out an ethnic cleansing of the Muslims in the state of Gujarat in 2002; to the militant Muslims supporting groups like Al-Qaeda these extremists have linked religious revival across the globe with political conflict. To these people, everything is in black and white – those who are with them and those who are not with them. But these are the minority fringes within all faiths.

Coming back to the mainstream Islamists, one can see a spectrum ranging from the conservatives or fundamentalists to the secularists with reformers adopting the middle ground. One finds these three categories in most Muslim states but the debate is not extensive in most of these states for a variety of reasons, including the nature of many Muslim regimes. This debate is also taking root within the Muslim Diaspora in a more vigorous fashion but it has not yet linked up with the mainstream Muslim World. However, all three strands within the debate are linked to conceptualisations of state and society within Islam.

This is why intra-Islamic World introspection has to focus on the place of religion in Muslim states within the demands of the twenty-first century . We have to discover how the basic Islamic tenets relating to state and society can be utilised within modernising societies. The fundamentalists[1] reject Western style democracy (regardless of which model) as being out of sync with Islamic forms of government because the idea of popular sovereignty contradicts the sovereignty of God. Also, the fundamentalists reject reform. Secularists challenge the very precept of Islam which holds that religion provides the guidelines for state and society. Secularists seek separation of religion and state – something which, incidentally, has not yet been effectively implemented even within Christian societies despite Christ’s clear statement on this: “Give to Caeser what is Caeser’s; give to God what is God’s”.

The reformists are seeking to reinterpret critical Islamic concepts and institutions within the present day realities. Notions of consultation of rulers and ruled (shura), consensus (ijma) of the society are seen as supportive of parliamentary forms of government and elections. The concept of reinterpretation (ijtihad) and public welfare (maslaha) are also seen in a modern context to justify religious reform. So, all in all, the debate on democracy is very much a debate within Islamic societies itself. As Esposito points out there are mainstream Muslim scholars, both men and women, laity and clergy, who are studying and debating the religious texts within their historical context and trying to distinguish between universal principles and laws and those texts that have a historical context.[2] There is also debate on democracy, the rights of women and minorities and pluralism. Post-9/11, there has also been a renewed focus on the whole notion of jehad itself. Unfortunately, the attempts from outside to link terrorism with Islam have obscured these debates within Muslim societies and intellectuals.

Can proactive intellectual thought and ideas emanate once again from the Islamic World? It must, because for Muslims state and society are inseparable from the faith. The dialectics of modernisation within Muslim societies and hostile perceptions from outside will create new formulations within Islamic thought. After all, innovations in art as reflected in architecture and calligraphy and literature from the Islamic world all reflects a diversity and an emerging self-confidence within Islamic civil societies. But they are still struggling against oppressive state structures and the entrenchment of a state-supported core of conservatism. Yet the winds of change can be seen all around. The danger is that the hostility of the West in the form of pressures, sanctions and conditionalities may undermine the move towards reform and provide more space to the fundamentalists and the obscurantists.

This has become the central dilemma of the moderates in the Muslim Diaspora. Take the case of Britain where the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) is the largest effort to give mainstream Muslims a collective voice at the national level. The idea is to counter the biased and negative image of Muslims in the media and to lobby for support from the government on issues like religious schools. But more radical Muslim groups decry the MCB as “the government’s favourite Muslim umbrella organisation.”[3] As Nahdi argues, “In Britain we have 56 nationalities of Muslims, who speak over 100 languages – it’s not fair for anybody to consider anybody to be representative. Why does the government expect to have one body?”

So the moderates are being seen increasingly as affiliated to their respective establishments, not only in Muslim states but also in the Muslim Diaspora in Europe and the US. That is why the Muslim World has to not only do effective introspection but also find new modalities for interacting with the rest of the world. In this connection, Pakistan’s President Musharraf has called for a two-pronged strategy. The first part is for Muslims to understand and overcome their internal weaknesses and divisions without recourse to militancy and extremism. As he put it at the 10 th OIC Summit in Malaysia in 2003: “Today, in the Islamic World, there is a disconnect between promise, potential and reality. Promise of a glorious destiny; potential of immense resources that we possess; and the reality of our failure to rise to the challenge of projecting the full weight and strength of the Ummah.” To overcome this, there is need for “self-emancipation” through an enlightened approach to the issues and problems being confronted by the Ummah. At the same time, the West must show a commitment to addressing and resolving conflicts besetting the Muslim World as well as assisting in the socioeconomic development of the Muslim World. Hence the strategy of Enlightenment and Moderation.

The issues of democracy and freedom of expression . The issue of democracy is becoming central to the debate not only on Muslim states but also within Muslim states. While each country has to evolve its own methods of representative government, the reality is that there is what Richard Haass calls a “democracy deficit” in the Muslim World. According to Haass, only one of every four countries with a Muslim majority, has a democratically elected government.[4] Haass concedes that elections alone cannot be confused with democracy and he stresses that in democracies there is a more equitable or widespread distribution of power both within government and within society.[5] As he points out, the Arab Human Development Reports of 2002 and 2003 both highlighted the lack of individual freedom and women empowerment and the close relationship between educational inadequacies and democracy.

The dialectics of sectarian divides – is there such a thing as one Muslim Ummah? As Dr Mahahthir of Malaysia put it, “From being a single Ummah, we have allowed ourselves to be divided into numerous sects, mazhabs and tarikats, each more concerned with claiming to be the true Islam than our oneness as the Islamic Ummah.”[6] Interestingly enough, for the rest of the world, these divisions do not matter when attacking any Muslim state. In these perceptions a Muslim state is not distinguished by its structures or creed – as the case of Turkey within the debate over EU membership exemplifies. But unless the Muslim states and civil societies begin to show tolerance and acceptance of their diversities as a means of a unifying universalism of Islam, they will remain divided and weak and, therefore, unable to meet the new challenges directed specifically at them from the rest of the world.

Resolving the demands of nationhood with those of the Ummah – the special problem of the Muslim Diaspora . While the concept of Ummah has been central to Muslims, the Muslim World, as represented in the OIC, has failed to change the hierarchy of priorities within each member state. No Muslim country has made its national interests subservient to the demands of the Muslim world and the demands of solidarity.[7] Perhaps the only cause that came closest to creating a viable solidarity amongst the Muslim states was the Palestinian issue, but even here we have seen this solidarity whittle away as individual Muslim states made their own peace with Israel. Had the OIC made peace with Israel collectively, at least some level of solidarity could have been maintained.

The attitude of member states towards the OIC can be ascertained by the fact that despite having some of the richest states as its members, the Organisation is sometimes so short of funds that it fails to pay salaries to its staff for months at a time. As Khan points out, “the member states are particularly frugal in defraying the basic annual contributions to the OIC budget.”

Also, members tend to use the OIC platform not only to further their national interests and customarily criticise their rival states, but also to indulge in squabbling with each other. This does nothing to bolster the unity of the Ummah within the civil societies of the Muslim states. For instance, during the 1980s, exchange of words were common between Iran and Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Morocco. In later years, we had exchanges between Uganda and Sudan, Iraq and Kuwait and so on – all of which pushed the real agenda of the OIC into the background. The cleavages amongst Muslim states run deep as reflected in what happened at the 5 th meeting of the OIC Standing Committee on Science and Technology in 1991 in Islamabad. The delegates comprised scientists and experts and the issue was how to push for advancement in science and technology within the Muslim World. During the second session, the leader of the Iraqi delegation saw a Kuwaiti delegate with a pistol in his belt. The Iraqi demanded that the Kuwaiti either leave the meeting or remove his gun. Since the latter did neither, the Iraqi minister announced that he was going to fetch his gun. While the Pakistani presiding over the session managed to pacify the two, neither side budged and the session had to be adjourned.[8] This is the absurdity of the Muslim World at the level of states!

Yet, there is much to unite the Muslim World. As Dr Mahathir of Malaysia stated, at the 10 th OIC Summit (October 2003), the OIC can have “a common stand if not on all issues, at least on some major ones, such as Palestine. We are all Muslims. We are all oppressed. We are all being humiliated.”

In many ways, perhaps, Pakistan is one Muslim state that has identified support for the Ummah as a national interest and this has been reflected in its Palestine policy (despite no Arab reciprocity on Kashmir) and its aid and assistance to various Muslims struggling for self-determination and independence – from Tunisia to Eritrea and Bosnia, to name just a few instances. Earlier, at a very difficult juncture in its history, Pakistan hosted the OIC Summit in 1974 and through the collectivity of the OIC recognised Bangladesh. This was not an ordinary event. Not only did Pakistan help to reinforce the Ummah’s image within its own civil society and Western public opinion, it allowed its nation to overcome the trauma of losing half the country. Moreover, Pakistan’s move disallowed any exploitation by vested interests to further polarise the Muslim World over the issue of recognition.

For the Muslim Diaspora the problem of reconciling nationalism with the concept of the Ummah – the global community owing loyalty to each other across national divides – is even greater, especially when their country is at war with a Muslim state. How do Muslim Britons react to the killing of Afghan and Iraqi civilians or to the abuse of Muslim prisoners by their country’s military? Worse still, the traditionalists abound more strongly within the Diaspora where they reaffirm negative stereotypes.

• Resolving intra-Muslim World conflicts
This is a major problem today when global issues relating to terrorism and war focus primarily on Muslim states. While the framing of the whole issue of terrorism in a religious guise has been damaging to the war against terrorism – since it has created recruiting space for the terrorists – the fact is that it is the Muslim World that is the focus of this war. The issue is the prevalence of conflicts that remain unresolved and where Muslims are being discriminated against – such as Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, to name just a few of the major conflicts. So, looking to the root causes of terrorism is critical in order to resolve the existing conflicts and thereby undermine the terrorists’ milieu. Interestingly enough, none of these issues are primarily religious issues – instead they are political issues focusing on nationalism, liberation and the right of self-determination. But they have been given a religious guise, which has aggravated the elements comprising the conflict.

The Muslim World has to examine the main conflictual trends prevailing within their own states and societies. Each region has its own regional trends and often these have little to do directly with religion. For instance, amidst the African Muslim states, there are primarily ethnic and racial conflicts within Muslim societies and states – as reflected, for instance, in the Darfur crisis in Sudan. There are also conflicts between Muslim majorities and the minorities, again premised primarily on ethnic and racial differences but aggravated by the religious factor. In the Middle East, we have, within Muslim states, sectarian conflicts as well as struggles for democracy. In Central Asia we have the problem of new states with old power structures and the growth of Islamic nationalism. Afghanistan, of course, is a state that is in the throes of complete restructuring. In South Asia the Muslim states have sectarian issues as well as struggles between fundamentalist forces and the forces of modernity – the latter themselves split into the so-called secularists and reformers. We also have the existence of a much larger neighbour with a strong Muslim minority. In Southeast Asia we have problems based on ethnic-religio differences and a neighbourhood where there are violent Muslim movements for liberation in non-Muslim states.

Yet with all these problems, we also have sources of power within the collectivity of the Muslim World. At present, the global Muslim population is about 1.3 billion – roughly 22 % of world population. About 900 Muslims live in 56 Muslim states that are part of the UN.[9] As for resources, the Islamic countries contain 73 percent of the world’s petroleum, 70 percent of the world’s natural rubber, 51 percent of the world’s natural gas, 39 percent of known uranium deposits, apart from other mineral and agricultural resources.[10] But this power has remained either unutilised or ineffective because the Ummah has not committed itself to creating an effective power bloc. The reasons for this failure lie in what the Arab Human Development Report 2003, subtitled, “Building a Knowledge Society”, states:

“The Report proposes s strategic vision that could support a creative Arab renaissance buttressed by five essential pillars:

Providing and guaranteeing the key freedoms of opinion, expression and association through good governance.
Broadening quality education and making it available to all.
Embedding science in Arab society, broadening the capacity for research and development and joining the information revolution decisively.
Shifting rapidly towards knowledge-based and higher value-added production.
Developing an enlightened Arab knowledge model that encourages cognitive learning, critical thinking, problem solving and creativity while promoting the Arabic language, cultural diversity and openness to other cultures.”[11]

The same goals have been reiterated in South Asia by the leadership of the Muslim states of Pakistan and Bangladesh and the Malaysian and Indonesian leadership in Southeast Asia has also stressed knowledge-based evolution of their societies.

It is only when Muslim states and societies are clear about their own vision and linkages with each other that they can formulate a viable response to the West. Even more important, unless the interaction between Muslim states and societies increases, they will not be able to substantially become a united force. At present, the internal dissensions are more stark than the unifying factors. Also, the cultural and historic diversity of the Islamic World needs to be appreciated and made a part of the projection of this World into the international milieu. The Muslim Diaspora has also by and large been ignored by the Islamic World, yet there are intellectual developments there that need to be transmitted to the civil societies within the latter.

Unless we develop a true sense of confidence and belief in ourselves, we will not be able to contend with the challenges facing us from without. Nor can we dialogue with the West in a meaningful fashion unless we have established an honest dialogue within ourselves to know exactly who we are today and where we stand in the comity of nations – with all our failings and strengths.

[1]This discussion draws heavily on the exchange between Abou El Fadl and John L. Esposito on “Islam and Tolerance”. http://www.bostonreview.net/BR27.1/esposito.html

[3] Fuad Nahdi, Editor of a Muslim magazine, Q-News as quoted in J. Vasagar, “Dilemma of the moderates”, The Guardian, 19 June 2002.

[4]Richard Haass, “Democracy deficit in the Muslim World”, in Daily Times ( Lahore, Pakistan).18 January, 2004.

[8]Saad S. Khan, Reasserting International Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001

[12] Prof. Khurshid Ahmed, “Muslim Ummah at the Threshold of the 21 st Century.” (Translation of article in Tarjumanul Quran, November 1997.

[13] Ismet Bozdag, The 3rd Idea the World is Waiting For: Socio-economic Model of Islam. Karachi, National Book Foundation.

[14] Foreword to the Report by Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, Regional Director, UNDP, Regional Bureau for Arab States.