Muzaffar Iqbal
On a certain day in the year 624 CE, about eighteen months after his migration to Madinah, the Prophet of Islam was sitting in his Mosque with his Companions. Some of those who had gathered on that day in the recently built Mosque, had emigrated from their beloved Makkah, leaving behind their property and possessions, others had lived in that city between the two lava tracks for generations, but had never observed the month of Ramadan as the month of fasting. They were all citizens of a theocratic state which had a written constitution, Mithaq al-Madinah, a multi-racial, multi-religious population consisting of Muslims, Jews, ascetics, agnostics, even non-believers. There was no regular army, no hospitals, no state bureaucracy, but there was one madrassah-school located in the Masjid. This newly established state was an experiment in state-craft that had no parallel in human history, not because a Prophet was its head—for Prophets had led states before—but because of the manner in which this state had come into existence.
Almost three years ago, 73 men and 2 women from the Oasis of Yathrib, as Madinah was then called, had pledged that if the Prophet moved to their city, they would protect him as they protected their children. Following this pledge at a remote place called Aqabah, Muslims of Makkah had emigrated to the Oasis and at the end of this process of migration, the Prophet himself had come. His arrival marked the beginning of the emergence of a theocratic state that would eventually encompass the entire Middle East and large parts of Asia and Africa. But more important than the vast geographical region which the state would acquire, is the way in which it was established.
This Islamic state came into existence in a manner unlike any other state that has ever come into existence and the process that created it remains the only valid mode of establishing an Islamic state anywhere in the world. This process was rooted in an unearthly Book, the Qur’an. It derived its political ideology, social, economic, and military strategies from a Book which was not even complete yet, but which was being revealed gradually, simultaneous with the emergence of the new state. As opposed to other books in our possession, this Book was neither poetry nor prose, neither philosophy nor history, but it contained a message that required immediate action and immediate transformation of the way a person lived. Its message was simple enough: there is but only One Creator Who has created the cosmos in which human beings live on one of the planets. This creation is for a fixed duration and for a purpose. At the end of this fixed duration, all existent things will perish. Then each and every human being will be resurrected and held accountable for what he or she did in the duration granted for his or her residence on planet earth. This accountability will then lead to an ever-lasting life in one of the two abodes the Creator has prepared: a Paradise with its delights and bounties and a Hell with its fire and tortures.
The Book revealed a belief system, a boundary within which human lives were to be lived, and directives for personal as well as collective social behavior ranging from economic transactions to visitation. More importantly, this Book was not merely words, when it first appeared on earth, it immediately became a living Book, in letter and spirit by at least one man on earth, and his every action was as if an embodiment of the Book. His noble conduct was not unknown to his fellow citizens who called him al-Amin, the trustworthy one. But his example was being followed by only a very small number of men and women. Most residents of Makkah ridiculed him. They called him a liar, a poet, a mad man, a sorcerer, and a dangerous magician. For thirteen long years, he lived in his native Makkah, calling men and women to the Message, but succeeded in attracting less than a five hundred human beings. Then, he was directed to leave his native city and move to the Oasis of Yathrib from where 73 men and 2 women had come to pledge themselves to his Message.
Yathrib became Madinah with his migration and on that day, about eighteen months after his arrival in the city, he sat among his Companions and told them that they had been commanded to fast for a whole month. Ramadan, the month of fasting, was already in their calendar but now it became a blessed month, a month in which the Qur’an was sent down.
When Ramadan arrived, and believers in Madinah began their first month of fasting, they had something other than hunger and thirst to contend with: an army of 1000 men had arrived from Makkah to crush the nascent state in the making. By all accounts, the battle that was fought on the 17th day of Ramadan of that year was a small battle, lasting for only a few hours, leaving behind 14 men dead on one side and 70 on the other. There was no collateral damage; no carpet bombing of cities, no sirens, no cruise missiles. All that happened on that day at Badr was an encounter between 313 men, who believed in the Message brought to them by the Prophet, and 1000 other men who did not.
The Battle of Badr, as the encounter was subsequently called, quickened the pace of formation of the first Islamic state in Madinah, but it did not change its foundation which was already well-established. It is this foundation and the process through which it emerged that provide us insights into the procedure for establishing an Islamic state in our own times. Unlike the popularly held images of bearded men with blood-shot eyes, brandishing their guns, hurtling accusations of Kufr, insisting that veils must be put on women’s faces and measuring the length of men’s beards, the real process through which an Islamic state can be established in the twenty-first century brings an entirely different set of images to mind. These images arise out of a process of transformation that changes hearts and lives quietly, reorienting them toward the Creator, leading to the formation of a rule of the land in which He is recognized as the Supreme Ruler.
II
The first Islamic state founded in Madinah came into existence through a process that had deep historical roots in the Prophetic tradition; every Prophet before Muhammad—may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him—had followed the same procedure. This procedure involved an initial invitation to the people, especially the high and the mighty of the land, to accept the revealed message, follow the mode of behavior and code of conduct that enjoined the establishment of justice in the social, economic, and political domains. This procedure does not establish an Islamic state merely by issuing decrees or by imposing measures such as the length of one’s beard; rather, it creates conditions for the emergence of a state organically through the transformation of men and women who constitute a polity. This inner transformation is automatically accompanied by dramatic changes in outward appearance, behavior, conduct and inter-personal relationships. Once a person transforms existentially, through the opening of the heart to the call of Islam, life-goals, ideals and desires all transform and this re-orientation affects the entire spectrum of life—from the way one earns living to the way one dresses, makes friends, does commerce, and does hundred and one other activities.
When sufficient number of individuals have been transformed in a society, an Islamic state emerges automatically. The first Islamic state that came into existence in Madinah emerged in this manner; it was an event in real time, a veritable historical process that can be revisited by any objective historian. This state did not come into existence overnight; it took almost a decade for its formation, but once it had emerged, it was so strong that within the short span of fifty years after the death of the Prophet—upon whom be peace—its borders had expanded to include Central Asia on the one hand and much of Africa on the other.
This expansion was not without its own problems and turmoil, and most Western historians and Islam-bashers find nothing but internal strife and disharmony in the era subsequent to the Prophet of Islam, but such analyses overlook the human condition which by its very nature cannot be free from strife, conflicts and disharmonies. What remains a well-established historical reality, however, is the fact that the Islamic state which emerged in Madinah within a short period of one decade created a polity in which the reorientation of individual lives was toward the Creator and this state transformed the lives of millions of human beings by making them part of a new social, political, and economic order in which the consciousness of the Hereafter was the supreme reality. Since our focus here is on the procedure through which an Islamic state emerges, we will not discuss the multiple ways in which the various institutions of this first Islamic state supported this supreme concern with the Hereafter, but suffice it to say that every state supports a certain vision of life for its populace and an Islamic state, by definition, is a state that promotes and encourages an Islamic vision of life, based on the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the most Noble Prophet.
Our main question is: how can an Islamic state come into existence in our own times? Based on what has already been said, it must be clear that an Islamic state cannot be established; it must emerge through a guided process on the pattern of the Prophetic model. This is such an obvious and clear procedure that every Muslim thinker concerned with the matter has been led to the same conclusion over the last fourteen hundred years. The procedure adopted by the Prophet of Islam—may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him—involved the transformation of a small number of men and women to a life completely dedicated to the Creator, followed by the spread of this new vision of life to a (still not too large) community of believers. Once this core group has emerged, it acts positively under the command of its leader to alter the larger social, political, and economic realities. This process inevitably leads to a confrontation with the existing social, political, and economic order. This is the most critical stage in the emergence of an Islamic state. It is at this stage that the mettle of the leader of the Islamic movement as well as that of the small core community is tested. Whenever and wherever the leadership has remained certain of the truth of the message of Islam and has behaved with patience and perseverance, an Islamic state has emerged.
Almost all Muslim thinkers of the last century have clearly spelled out this procedure for the emergence of an Islamic state in our times, but none has been able to lead the process to a successful end except for Imam Khomeini. His success, and the failure of leaders like Sayyid Abu’l-A`la Mawdudi and the movements such as the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, provide an excellent source for understanding the procedure for the emergence of an Islamic state. These will be explored in subsequent columns, but it must remain perpetually clear that the Islamic state that comes into existence through this procedure is not a state that enforces Islam, rather, it is a state in which Islam is lived. Of course this state establishes laws according to Divine Writ and it promotes good and prohibits evil—but all states establish some kind of laws and promote some kind of values they deem to be good and prohibit others that they deem to be evil, the difference is in the origin of these laws and values. In an Islamic state, the principles for legislation originate in the Book of Allah and the practice of His most Noble Messenger.
(III)
The procedure for the emergence of an Islamic state in our times has been outlined by a handful of 20th century thinkers, but none has explained it in such exacting detail as Sayyid Abu’l-A’la Mawdudi (1903-79). Mawdudi’s systematic and coherent formulation of the vision of Islam as a viable alternative to the secular political philosophies which began at a time when most of the Muslim lands were under the colonial yoke and Islam was considered to be a spent force, at least by the West. His emergence as a major leader of Islamic revival has a classical pattern: he first transformed himself by a slow process of understanding of Islam, he then sought to transform others. In later years, he would recall his own transformation as a sort of "conversion", as if he rediscovered Islam with its full significance in the late 1920s and once this vision of Islam had solidified within his own being, he could not help but to set his life goal "to strive in the path of truth, to propagate its cause, and to bring (his) vision into reality."
As mentioned in previous installments, an Islamic state can only emerge in our times through the centuries-old, time-tested, Divinely-revealed procedure of transformation of a small number of men and women into truly dedicated believers, who then attract a small community around a leader; this core community then becomes the nucleus of a new social, economic, and political order. This is the procedure adopted by the Prophet of Islam (may Allah’s peace and blessing be upon him) as well as by all Prophets prior to him and all reformers since his time. There is, really, no other way to this end, and Mawdudi understood this well.
Mawdudi followed this method of establishing a core group, first at Pathankot in 1938 and later through the establishment of Jama’at-i-Islami in August 1941. This was the time when Muslims of the Indian subcontinent were being led by secularised leaders who had gathered on the platform of a political party which was established with the blessings of overbearing colonial rulers and greatly influenced by landowners and turncoats. The establishment of Jama’at-i-Islami was one of the most significant events in the 20th century Islamic revival, though few realised its importance at that time.
By the time of the establishment of Jama’at-i-Islami in Lahore, Mawdudi’s political ideas had been clearly stated in a number of works and he had outlined the path to the emergence of an Islamic state. Mawdudi’s articulation of the path to Islamic revival and eventual emergence of an Islamic state was so solidly rooted in the Islamic tradition that it acquired tremendous power by the sheer weight of its truth, for truth always has an inherent power. This is reflected in the impact Mawdudi and Jama’at had on the fundamental documents of new nation-state during the early years of Pakistan. The Objective Resolution of 1949 and the Constitution of 1956 both testify to his tremendous influence although neither he nor the Jama’at had any political strength in terms of electoral victories.
But just when the newly emerging cadres of Jama’at and the half-trained inner core was on the verge of a deep personal transformation and ready to be a cohesive, dynamic, and powerful community which could catalyse the greater transformation of the entire country, leading to an organic emergence of the Islamic state, something snapped within Mawdudi. Instead of following the Prophetic path, he now chose to follow the path of elections, street politics, and secular tactics. This was in 1951. The Jama’at participated in the Punjab elections and hardly any of its candidates could get more than a few votes.
This most puzzling turn in Mawdudi’s career was to change the entire sequence of events in Pakistan, and though the Jama’at continued to have a residual impact on the subsequent history of Pakistan, the possibility of emergence of an Islamic state was destroyed by none other than its most articulate propagator.
Mawdudi was advised by some of the other thinkers who had gathered on the platform of the Jama’at not to follow this course, but personal short-sightedness and a penchant for quick gains had so clouded his vision that he could not see anything beyond the immediate political gains, though even those proved to be ephemeral. In the process, however, he created a breach within the ranks of the Jama’at he had worked so hard to establish. When he found himself opposed by the senior leaders of the Jama’at who had reviewed the entire course of events leading to Mawdudi’s betrayal of his own ideas, he resigned from the Jama’at. But since his position in the Jama’at was central, he knew that his resignation would create enormous pressure on the Shura and that is exactly what happened. He took back his resignation and those who opposed him resigned, paving the way for the emergence of an unchallenged, autocratic leadership of one man in a Jama’at that had been established to follow the Prophetic path. This betrayal of the cause not only reduced the Jama’at-i-Islami to the stature of a secular political party, it also doomed the possibility of the emergence of an Islamic state.
In a poignant letter addressed to Mawdudi, Mawlana Amin Ahsan Islahi, who would later write one of the best 20th-century commentaries of the Qur’aan (Tadabbur al-Qur’aan), wrote: "The Jama’at that had arisen on the pattern of the Prophetic tradition, now adopted immoral, secular tactics because its leader advocated the principle that pragmatic principles require a different methodology than ideological commitments." This secular, utterly non-Islamic and thoroughly immoral contraction, which was to remain Jama’at-i-Islami’s main philosophy after 1951, not only destroyed the noble cause for which it was established, it also prevented the emergence of an Islamic state in Pakistan. Once again, it was proved that an Islamic state can only emerge if the leaders of the Islamic movement remain true to the Prophetic mode. The validity of this principle was proven in 1979 when a 79-year-old man was able to lead a revolution, leading to the emergence of the first Islamic state in modern history. Imam Khomeini succeeded where Mawlana Mawdudi had failed. Why?
(IV)
On February 1, 1979, a 79-year-old man landed at Tehran airport after fourteen years of exile. Before his arrival, he had been sending cassettes of speeches from Paris to his followers. His messages had so stirred the souls of thousands of Iranian men and women that the apparently indestructible hold of the ruling king was swept away by the tide. How could Sayyid Ruhullah al-Musavi al-Khomeini lead an Islamic revolution and help the emergence of an Islamic state through cassette recordings of his messages, in a country that was considered to be the strongest hub of American influence in the region, and where more than 40,000 American soldiers, CIA agents, and advisors were present at the time of Reza Shah's sudden departure?
This question has haunted Western political thinkers for more than a quarter of a century and remains one of the most intriguing questions in twentieth century political history. The revolution that led to the emergence of the first Islamic state in modern history is, however, neither a mysterious phenomenon nor an oddity, for Muslim history is replete with such quick transformations. One of the most important, basic, but poorly understood characteristic of Muslims is their capacity for sea-changes through the stirring of their souls by an appeal to the vision of Islam. This capacity is not an empty, ephemeral, or transitory phenomenon; it is a very deep inner transformation capable of instantaneous metamorphosis. There are numerous examples of this sea-change in the Companions of the Prophet of Islam. Men who were vehemently opposed to his message would suddenly see the light and transform themselves, bringing striking changes to all facets of their lives.
This capacity to return to the true vision of Islam and this ability to realign one's life to the dictates of the most Noble Book manifests in the life of Muslims in numerous other ways as well. The Hajj experiences of thousands of believers, the sudden awakening of a higher purpose in life through contact with a saintly person, and numerous other modes of transformation are recorded in history. In the case of Iran, what transformed the lives of millions of men and women were not just the cassettes coming from Paris, but a bold, clear and consistent message: Islam is a complete way of life and not simply a set of rituals and beliefs; this complete way of life cannot be established in a polity unless the entire system is changed and this change cannot happen through cooperation with those who are running and operating the present corrupt and un-Islamic system; it has to come through a revolutionary process.
It was the consistency of this message, along with the personal integrity of the ulema who led the Islamic Revolution of Iran that produced the unimaginable result in 1979. While Maulana Mawdudi of Pakistan had articulated the path to the emergence of an Islamic state with as much clarity, if not more, as Imam Khomeini, he did not follow his own articulation and abandoned the Prophetic approach. Imam Khomeini, on the other hand, was able to touch the souls of millions of Iranians because throughout the long years of his struggle, he never abandoned this method. He was not only fearless; he was also deeply convinced of the veracity of his goal and the method of his achieving it. Most of all, Khomeini's success lies in his conviction that whatever results are achieved through struggle are not really in his own hands, or in the hands of any human; what really matters is only with the struggle.
In an interview given in Paris, before his return to Iran, he was asked: "Do you think our present course is wise? What will happen if the army keeps slaughtering people? Will people sooner or later not get tired and discouraged?" He responded by saying "our duty is only to struggle; the result is with Allah." It is this total detachment that arises out of long years of reflection and contemplation which creates a spiritual focus which, in turn, produces sea-changes in society. That such a transformation is always possible within Islamic polity is a possibility that exists at all times and therefore, in spite of the present situation, the emergence of Islamic states in the traditional Muslim lands remains an ever-present real possibility. The fact that this has not happened in countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, and so on, does not by any means preclude it for time to come. This is not empty hope and idealisation; it is a conviction borne out of an understanding of the spiritual makeup of Muslim people.
The apparent power of secularised regimes of the Muslim world, the hold of the Western powers on state institutions, and the leadership of men who consider Islam to be a religion good for rituals but unfit for establishing a complete political, economic, and social order notwithstanding, there is something inherently indestructible in the Muslim psyche that keeps it perpetually committed to the vision inspired by the two Shahadahs: there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger. This commitment to the only one God, this attestation of the veracity of the message of Muhammad, the son of Abdullah, whose noble conduct and truth has been vouchsafed by Allah, the Most High, is a commitment of another kind which cannot be erased from the hearts of the believers. A commitment which can stir the sleeping soul at any moment, leading to the emergence of a small community of believers who can act as the harbinger of a change in the society, leading to the emergence of an Islamic state. What is needed at this time of Muslim history is, therefore, careful and sustained efforts to establish a large number of just such nuclei of change -- small groups of men and women who join hands together and help each other to gain an inner transformation and clarity through constant reflection on the complete system of life enshrined in the Glorious Book of Allah and through an intimate recollection and following of the life of His most Noble Messenger. If this path is followed, numerous Islamic states will emerge all over the traditional lands of Islam within a generation, with the permission of the One Whose Mercy grants the believers a light that dispels darkness and allows truth to prevail.
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