|
 The Quran and the Sunnah have been the guide of
Muslim political and moral activism throughout the centuries. The example of
how the Prophet Muhammad and his companions led their lives and developed the
first Muslim community serves as a blueprint for an Islamically guided and
socially just state and society.
More than a prophet, the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy
and blessings of God be upon him, was the founder of a state. In the era of
the Prophet Muhammad and his successors, all Muslims belonged to a single
community whose unity was based upon the interconnection of religion and the
state, where faith and politics were inseparable. Islam expanded from what is
now Saudi Arabia across North Africa, through the Middle East and into Asia and
Europe. Historically, Islam has been the religious ideology for the
foundation of a variety of Muslim states, including the great Islamic empires:
Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750–1258), Ottoman (1281– 1924), Safavid
(1501–1722), and Mughal (1526–1857). In each of these empires and other
sultanate states, Islam was the basis of the state’s legal, political,
educational, economic, and social institutions.
By the 11th century the Islamic world was under attack
by the Turks and the Mongols. They were not conquered by Islam; rather, they
entered the Islamic world as conquerors and converted to Islam over the
following centuries.
Over the last two centuries the Islamic world has been
under another transformation from the West. The Europeans who came in the 19th
and 20th centuries to militarily colonize the Muslim world did not convert like
the Turks and Mongols. For the first time, Muslims were politically subjugated
by the European empires of Russia, Holland, Britain, and France.
The 20th century was marked by two dominant themes: European
colonialism and the Muslim struggle for independence. The legacy of
colonialism remains alive today. Colonialism altered the geographical map of
the Muslim world. It drew the boundaries and appointed leaders over the Muslim
countries. After WWII, the French were in West and North Africa, Lebanon, and
Syria; the British in Palestine, Iraq, Arabian Gulf, the Indian Subcontinent,
Malaya, and Brunei; and the Dutch in Indonesia. It replaced the educational,
legal, and economic institutions and challenged the Muslim faith. Colonial
officers and Christian missionaries became the soldiers of European expansion
and imperialism. Christianity was seen by the colonialists as inherently
superior to Islam and its culture. This attitude can be seen in the statement
of Lord Cromer, the British counsel in Cairo from 1883-1907, “…as a social
system, Islam has been a complete failure. Islam keeps women in a position of
inferiority…it permits slavery…its general tendency is intolerance towards
other faiths…”
European colonialism replaced Muslim self rule under
Islamic Law, which had been in existence from the time of the Prophet Muhammad,
by their European lords. The colonialists were modern Crusaders – Christian
warriors going out of their way to uproot Islam. The French spoke of their
battle of the cross against the crescent. The only difference was that the
Europeans came, this time, not with cavalry and swords, but with an army of
Christian missionaries and missionary institutions like schools, hospitals, and
churches, many of which remain in Muslim countries to this day. The French
seized the Jami’ Masjid of Algiers and turned it into the cathedral of
Saint-Philippe with the French flag and cross on the minaret, symbolizing
Christian domination.
The Muslim world’s centuries of long struggle with
Western colonial rule was followed by authoritarian regimes installed by
European powers. The absence of stable states has led many to ask whether
there is something about Islam that is antithetical to civil society and rule
of law. The answer to this question lies more in history and politics than in
religion. Modern Muslim states are only several decades old and they were
carved out by European powers to serve Western interests.
In South Asia, the British divided the Indian
subcontinent into India and Pakistan, giving portions of the Muslim-majority
state of Kashmir to each of them. The conflicts that resulted from these
actions have led to the deaths of millions in the communal warfare between Hindus
and Muslims, the civil war between East and West Pakistan that led to the
creation of Bangladesh, and conflicts in Kashmir over Indian rule that persist
to the present day. In the Middle East, the French created modern Lebanon from portions of Syria, and the British set the borders for Iraq and Kuwait and created a new entity called Jordan. They also created a new country called Israel, ousting non-Jewish locals and taking land once belonging to Christians and Muslims
and surrendering it to a foreign Jewish authority. Such arbitrary borders fed
ethnic, regional, and religious conflicts including the Lebanese Civil War
between Christians and Muslims, the occupation of Lebanon by Syria, the Gulf War, which resulted from Saddam Hussein’s claim to Kuwaiti territory, and
the Israel-Palestinian conflict which need no further explanation.
Political and economic models were borrowed from the
West to replace the Islamic political and economic systems after independence
from colonial rulers in the mid-twentieth century, creating overcrowded cities
lacking social support systems, high unemployment, government corruption, and a
growing gap between rich and poor. Rather than leading to a better quality of
life, Westernization led to the breakdown of traditional family, religious, and
social values. Many Muslims blame Western models of political and economic
development as the sources of moral decline and spiritual malaise.
Unelected governments, whose leaders are kings, military
or ex-military officers, rule the majority of countries in the Muslim world. State
power is heavily reliant on security forces, police, and military, and where
freedoms of assembly, speech, and press are severely limited. Many Muslim
states operate within a culture of authoritarianism that is opposed to civil
society and a free press.
In addition to influencing those who came to power in
emerging modern Muslim nation-states, Europe, and later America, forged close
alliances with authoritarian regimes, tolerating or supporting their non democratic
ways in exchange for, or to ensure, Western access to oil and other resources.
When people ask themselves why the Muslim world is
distraught with violence and unrest, the answer can surely be found in the
colonial interference, both past and present, in the region. Therefore, any future
success depends upon returning to a society which is governed by the principles
of the people who live in it, one in which all its affairs are governed by
Islam.
|
