Understanding the Phases of Islamic Movement--I

Muzaffar Iqbal

The fall of Baghdad in 1258, ending the weak and by then thoroughly corrupt and impotent Abbasid caliphate, seemed to many contemporaries a singular blow from which the Muslim Ummah could never recover. Yet, within a century of that devastating surrender of the very seat of the caliphate, the entire Muslim world was reconfigured, resulting in the emergence of three powerful empires: the Safavi, the Ottomon and the Indian Mughal. This great realignment of the traditional Muslim lands was to last until the beginning of the modern era, when almost the entire Muslim world was colonized by the European states in a manner that once more seemed to have dealt a final decisive blow.

Unlike the Mongols, who arrived at the gates of Baghdad only through their fearless zeal,  and who had little by way of science, technology, philosophical learning, the nineteenth century colonizers of the Muslim world were self-proclaimed harbingers of a civilization that had attained supremacy in the production of scientific knowledge. This important difference was to determine many aspects of the dynamics of subsequent Muslim response to this colonization.

It has taken almost two centuries for Muslims to recover, to a certain degree, from this new attack and, unlike the previous occasions, this recovery is still not complete; an internal fracture remains to be healed. This internal fissure has produced a sub-class within Muslim  societies which has lost its own faith-based worldview and has subscribed to the secularized worldview of the colonizing powers. In their short-sighted and hurried approach, these people see the encounter between the Islamic and the Western civilizations as a fait accompli, as if it has solidified in time for all eternity. Their hurried conclusion is a product of  lack of understanding of historical processes as well as of a certain weakening of their rooting in their faith tradition. But regardless of the causes, for this small but influential group, the Islamic civilization has succumbed to Western civilization forever. They draw this conclusion from the material disparities between the two civilizations. Since these disparities loom large in their methodology as a decisive element in civilizational encounters, they despair, because they see no possibility of achieving a similar material strength against the West. This defeatist attitude then leads to servitude, submission and eventually to accepting a client-status.

It was this defeated elite which had received the gift of governance from the departing colonizers; now these men and women control almost all material resources of the traditional Muslim lands and work against their own people. This is ironic because they had little share in forcing the colonizers to leave. The colonizers had departed not because this small elite had fought against the occupation, but because of the heroic struggle of ordinary Muslims who gave tremendous sacrifices for their emancipation from the colonial yoke.

These ordinary Muslims, whose renewed faith had provided them a new sense of dignity and a new power against the occupying armies, could not provide leadership in the post-colonial era; they were mostly illiterate, poor, and disempowered men and women who came from villages and new shanty towns of crowded cities in the colonies. They participated in the freedom movements and fought against the occupying armies in the various struggles and wars of independence that emerged throughout the Muslim world during the first half of the twentieth century. These ordinary believers had an unconquerable faith; their power did not come from sophisticated weapons, but from their resolve to reclaim their lands, traditions and dignity.

Having done their duty, these men and women left their fate in the hands of those who looked like their own brethren but who were, in fact, defeated and enslaved men who had little understanding of their faith and far less commitment to a way of life rooted in a vision of reality that seeks of build a polity driven by Allah’s laws. These men then became the so-called fathers of Muslim nations and heroes of revolutions who walked on the stage of history with their greater than life portraits over-shadowing the true dynamics of the Islamic movement that had given birth to these independence movements; their remnants are still around, but for all practical purposes, this phase of struggle is over. There are no more heroes to be found in the Muslim world from this class, only traitors, collaborators and despised clients.

In addition to this small subclass that willingly submitted to the colonial masters and received the reins of the newly independent Muslim states as a reward, there is another much larger class of Muslims which feels hopeless against the odds, but for entirely different reasons. These Muslims have not sold their loyalty for worldly gains, political positions or money and they have not left their faith tradition. They genuinely feel despair when they look at the situation of Muslims in a world dominated by non-Muslims. This despair leads to defeatism and to a feeling of helplessness. What is wrong with us, they seem to be asking, why cannot we achieve even a minimum degree of material progress, self-sufficiency and dignity.

Some of these Muslims then try to understand the situation through the works of Western or Western-trained Muslim scholars. This leads to total confusion and hopelessness because of the methodology used in these works. These attempts to understand Islam, its civilization and history, using Western academic methods which refuse to acknowledge the primary force of Islam, the revelation, Wahy, are inadequate tools because revelation is so central to all things Islamic that nothing can be gained without an understanding of this decisive factor, which set the process of unfolding of Muslim history in time and space. Moreover, this secular methodology does not accept the second most important factor that has shaped Muslim history: the  closing of the Prophetic cycle through the coming of the Prophet of Islam, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him.

In the absence of any acknowledgement of these two primary factors, this scholarship is left with a tale of dynasties, interest groups, market forces, materialistic politics of various social groups and other elements that it considers foundational to the study of Islamic civilizations and history. The inadequacy of these studies can be likened to the study of human body through a methodology that does not acknowledge the presence of a spirit that gives humans a dynamic inner integrity and unity. Thus, even when these studies are not concealed attempts to propagate a certain hidden agenda, they fail to explore their subject, because they lack adequate methodology to understand the greatest operating force in the Islamic polity: revelation, having a specific inner (batini) and outer (zahiri) dimension.

A similar confusion arises in many minds when secular methodologies are used to understand the so-called split of Islam into Sunni and Shia polities. When viewed from the secular perspectives and methods, these two historical and social deployments of the inner reality of Islam appear to be the product of schism rooted in worldly gains, politics, clash of individual egos and the like. But when viewed from the perspective of the sacred history and with its own methodology, these two polities do not arise out of these factors, but from the very nature of the Divine plan, through a historical process that precedes the arrival of the Prophet of Islam (may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him) by several centuries. When viewed from this perspective, the Sunni and the Shia traditions do not arise out of a conflict of secular interests, but as two expressions which together fully express the inner reality of Islam on a historical human plane. This deployment in two realms, let us note, is only limited to a certain outer sphere of Islam’s universal message which remains valid for all races and all times; there is nothing in these two expressions that destroys the vital unitary reality of Islam which remains operative in traditions.

(To be concluded)