Muslim history is replete with incidents of external aggressions and internal chaos. Muslims of every age and area have tried to confront the devastating waves posed to the Islamic civilization. Mutazilites were the first who took philosophy and reason and started exploring new ideas. However as soon as the rulers and the fundamentalists knew the rationalists’ different approach to Quran and their inclination to reason they were dubbed as transgressors and infidels.
Later, another group of philosophers emerged and quite earnestly propagated science and the exploration of nature and natural laws. They too were expunged as non-conformists to the Islamic traditions. The surfeit of rhetoric marred them in controversies, created tensions between the philosophers and the orthodox religious group, resulting in the exclusion of science and philosophy. The laymen thought science is infidelity and transgressions from the very core values of Islam. Thus, science ceased to exist in an overly orthodoxic society.
Moving ahead, Muslims were invaded and destroyed to death by the Mongols in the 13th century. Islamic civilization was endangered and Muslims annihilated. Now the only way at hand for Muslims was to preserve their culture and religion against not only the internal nonconformists or scientists but the external forces as well. Added pain came from the crusades to the north who already had messed up the situation.
The remnants of Muslims were preserved and, quite painstakingly, any endeavour deemed against traditional values was stopped and discouraged under various guises. On one hand the Muslims had to fight a political war against the external forces and regain the lost glory of Baghdad; and in fact, the adopted worldly knowledge too, burnt by the Mongols. And on the other hand, no science, reason and philosophy was left to be promoted since it laid roots in sectarian strife: the Shaii’s own it. And more so, the philosophers averted Muslims from Islam and faith as according to the Ulema of Madrassa Nizamiyyah established in the 11th century.
There is a need to promote the progressive reformists within the Islamic community, those who challenge the status quo and openly put forward a humanitarian and positive stance on minorities, human rights and gender equality. The establishment of an Islamic society will ensue only after making an inclusive environment where the life and dignity of every human being is safe and respected.
Lately, in the 18th and 19th centuries, modernism borne by the imperial powers posed again a threat to the Islamic civilization. This time modernity was the evil implanted by the imperial powers. The youth and Western-educated class got a new look at the world different from those who wanted to preserve Islamic values. This class had both Islam-oriented and Western- or science-oriented people.
The fundamentalist class had to stand against the Western missionary propaganda and to tackle the evil of modernity penetrating in the youth. Whereas the progressive class within the Muslims started their movements to reconcile between modernity and Islam.
Although the fundamentalists repudiated the progressive scholars’ stance of Islamic modernism however they did not have an alternative as Muslim societies around the world were at worst breathing their existence within the imperial powers. Muhammad Abduh in Egypt, Sayyed Ahmad Khan in India, Sayyed Jamal Uddin in Iran, Rashid Rida in Syria, among others, strongly upheld that the predicament of modernity could be coped only with reason and intellect.
The fundamentalists were mainly bent on a no-reform agenda and their core value was imitation of early Muslim society. Whereas the Islamic modernists wished to reform Islamic principles according to the modern world challenges. The progressive group also endeavoured to master the knowledge and technologies by virtue of which the West had subjugated most of the Muslim world. Two major world wars boomeranged the Western influence in the colonial world resulting in the emancipation of nations.
In the middle of the 20th century, a number of Muslim countries got independence from the colonial powers. Despite the fact that the Muslim world entered a new phase of nation-state and Westminster democracy, the fundamentalist theologian class grew even further and posed a serious threat to democracy. Not due to the open ground left by the colonial powers but by the state-sponsored liberalism and secular values, as these were imposed.
Democracy is about political development, institutionalization, and secular values for the ultimate goal of an inclusive environment and prosperity. However, the fundamentalist class didn’t accede to it. In Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Pakistan a reactionary fury was staged against these values. Much has been said about the redundancy of religious ideology as soon as socialism, secularism, liberalism got to the mainstream politics. Yet not only the nation-states endorsed it, but they were pushed to the newly established states by the West. However, the Islamist groups present in the Muslim states have not accepted secular values and most of the time do not deem the state as a separate identity from an individual. For that reason, they have always supported parties and groups having authoritarian tendencies. These groups have a different view regarding genders, minorities, and human rights. They have yet not accepted the 21st century and that’s why they are always silent over the atrocities against minorities, and religious victims.
With a worldwide hot debate on Islamic reforms and Ijtihad, Islamist groups in the Muslim world are suppressing the Islamist progressive Scholars and movements and labelling them as Western agents. Pakistan too is witnessing a situation where an Islamic scholar not having got a certificate from a Deoband-affiliated madrasa is not deemed an Islamic scholar and hence rejected by the vast community.
There is a need to promote the progressive reformists within the Islamic community, those who challenge the status quo and openly put forward a humanitarian and positive stance on minorities, human rights and gender equality. The establishment of an Islamic society will ensue only after making an inclusive environment where the life and dignity of every human being is safe and respected.
