Someone Needs To Challenge the Radical and Revisionist Interpretations of Islam
By
Ram Madhav
30 Jun, 2022
Radicalisation
Of Individual Muslims, On The Fictitious Notion That “Islam Is In Danger”,
Started With The Rise Of Outfits Like Abdul Nasser Madani’s Islamic Sevak Sangh
In Uttar Pradesh In The Mid-1990s, And Continues To This Day Through Outfits
Like The Popular Front Of India (PFI) In Kerala
Main
Points:
1. India’s
Muslims have to seriously ponder over this Wahhabist Islam’s growing influence.
2. Reform needs
courage; lacking that courage, people mostly become apologists or indulge in
platitudes.
3. Nahdlatul
Ulama has openly come out against Wahhabism in a declaration in 2018.
4. Battle for
civilisation should be for reform of religions from radicalism.
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Jashoda Sahu Teli, wife of tailor Kanhaiya Lal, June 29, 2022, Udaipur
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The horror
of Udaipur is a chilling reminder of the deep penetration of Islamist
radicalism among the Indian Muslim youth. Hindu–Muslim tensions have a history
of more than a century in India. There were many occasions when Hindus and
Muslims had fought pitched battles on the streets. Communal clashes, witnessed
largely in Muslim-dominated towns and cities across the country, were a regular
phenomenon in the last century, especially in the 1980s and ’90s. But those
were largely seen as law and order problems and many times police action or
“peace meetings” would help resolve the dispute over which those riots would
erupt.
But, with
the rise of Islamist politics in the 1980s in West Asia on the ill-conceived
premise of “Islam in danger”, radicalism and terrorism sneaked into India too.
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Mumbai was
the first city to witness Islamic terror in the early 1990s, a result of years
of radicalisation among the country’s Muslims. We blamed neighbouring Pakistan
for its support to Islamic terror in India. No doubt, Pakistan became the
mothership of Islamic terror in the region in the last two decades of the
previous century. It subsequently became the global terror capital too. While
it exported political terrorism in the form JKLF in Kashmir, it simultaneously
exported Islamic terror into several Muslim-dominated areas in the country.
Starting with the 1990s, the country witnessed countless incidents of terror
all across its length and breadth, from Kerala to Assam and Tamil Nadu to
Jammu.
Every
terror incident was condemned, the recalcitrant neighbour blamed, but somehow,
political correctness prevented many from underscoring the radicalisation of
the Indian Muslim youth in general. This radicalisation of individual Muslims,
on the fictitious notion that “Islam is in danger”, started with the rise of
outfits like Abdul Nasser Madani’s Islamic Sevak Sangh in Uttar Pradesh in the
mid-1990s, and continues to this day through outfits like the Popular Front of
India (PFI) in Kerala.
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Also Read: Can Islamism Be Regarded as The Root Cause of
Extremism?
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Indian
intelligence and security agencies have been closely monitoring and acting
against the mushrooming radical Islamist outfits. Greater radicalisation was
witnessed in south India, once prided over religious amity, in the last two
decades. Hyderabad, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and coastal Karnataka became the hub of
radical Islamist outfits like Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), Al
Ummah, Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath (TNTJ), Indian Mujahideen and even Al-Qaeda
in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). The latest among them is Kerala’s PFI. These
groups have expanded their network to all parts of the country and built
connections with global terror outfits like Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The PFI alone is
said to have its presence in more than 300 districts in the country, according
to Indian Intelligence agencies.
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In a report
released in 2020, even the United Nations had warned India that Islamic
radicalism was on a steep rise on its soil. It manifested through several
instances in the last few years, recent examples being the death threats issued
by the TNTJ activists to the Karnataka judges who delivered judgment in the
hijab case, or “death to Hindus” chants by a Muslim boy at a PFI rally in
Kerala. Beheadings, like the widely reported Udaipur incident and unreported
incidents in Maharashtra, are the latest, but unlikely to be the last,
incidents of this nature.
Islamic
radicalism grew in West Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan because of state
patronage. But in India, it is the liberal political and intellectual apologist
ecosystem, coupled with stony silence, if not tacit support, of the Muslim
leadership, that is emboldening these radical outfits and individuals. Central
agencies, like the IB and NIA, are working hard to curb the activities of the
radical outfits that promote terror and violence. But state agencies,
especially in states controlled by the opposition parties, like Kerala, Tamil
Nadu and Rajasthan, refuse to do their bit.
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More
importantly, state action is not going to be sufficient to curb the rise of
Islamic radicalism. From Afghanistan to Yemen, that has been the experience,
even of the most powerful countries in the world. It is the Muslim world that
has to stand up and respond. When certain extremist forces tried to hijack
Sikhism, it was the Sikh religious and political leadership that had stood up
against the terrorists and saved the religion. Such an initiative should come
from the Indian Muslim leadership too.
When I
recently said in an interview that the Muslims should discard concepts like
Ummah, Kafir and Jihad, some well-intentioned Muslim scholars responded by
insisting that those concepts had a different meaning. But what is the use of
telling Hindus about a ‘different meaning’, when the madrasa and the mosque consistently
propagate hatred and exclusivity! How does it help hiding behind the facetious
argument of “Islamophobia” when some Hindus point out the need for reform?
It is this
attitude egged on by the reckless liberal intelligentsia in the country that is
squarely responsible for the Udaipur terror. It also makes some Hindus to
conclude that Islam will not change.
But
religions do undergo reform and transformation. Human history is a testimony to
that. Hinduism had shed many of its outdated legacies like sati,
untouchability, etc. Reform has been integral to its progress. It took 1,500
years for Christianity to implement major reforms in its anti-secular,
anti-science and anti-democratic demeanour during which time it waged wars
against its own people and, of course, against Islamists, burnt to death women
and unbelievers in hordes and ruled ruthlessly over populations in Europe.
Galileo had to go to prison; Henry the VIIIth had to openly challenge the
clergy; and the Italian Nationalists had to endure the army of the Pope. But in
the end, it led to Reformation and paved the way for Enlightenment.
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Time for
such a reform has come for Islam too. The first three centuries of Islam were
the period of intellectual blossoming. Islamic scholars had aggregated knowledge
from all over the world—from Greeks and Romans to Hindus from whom they took
mathematics and the concept of zero—and Arabised knowledge. Names of Ibn Sina
or Avicenna, Ibn Hazm and Ibn Rushd or Averroes evoke respect even to this day.
But the desire to conquer the world brought Islam the same kind of infamy as
that of medieval Christianity. As wars started bringing diminishing results and
modernity started influencing societies in Europe and Asia, a new orthodox and
illiberal brand of Islam took birth in the mid-18th century. Started by a Sunni
Islamic revivalist and fundamentalist theologian called Muhammad Ibn Abd
al-Wahab, this puritanical Islamic movement, known today as Wahhabism, became a
dominant stream in Sunni Islam in the last two centuries. Heft was added to
this brand of Islam by petrodollars. From Palestine to Pakistan, it is this
hardline Wahhabism that is leading to the rise of radicalism and fundamentalism
among the Muslims.
Wahhabism
came to influence Indian Islam in the 19th century itself through the Ahl-e
Hadith movement started in Bhopal. This puritanical movement was in a way an
attempt at negating the growing Hindu-Muslim bonhomie witnessed during the
First War of Independence in 1857, and a version of syncretic Islam that was taking
root in the form of worship of saints and dargahs. Ahl-e Hadith was the Indian
version of Wahhabism that gained sweeping influence over Arab lands just a
century before, thanks largely to the patronage Abd al-Wahhab, its founder,
received from Mohammad bin Saud, the founding father of the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia. That this revisionist and exclusivist version of Islam had succeeded in
its mission can be gauged from the fact that the Hindus and Muslims who had
fought together against the British in 1857 were seen fighting against each
other nine decades later, resulting in the Partition of India on communal lines
and the creation of Pakistan.
India’s
Muslims have to seriously ponder over this Wahhabist Islam’s growing influence.
Cynics may conclude that Islam means Wahhabism. But some examples suggest
otherwise, too. In Saudi Arabia, the mothership of Wahhabi Islam, young prince
Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is bringing about rapid reforms. MBS had even
questioned the very existence of Wahhabism saying nobody “can define this
Wahhabism”. He introduced a new education policy focused on “Saudi national
identity” as against the identity of “Islamic Ummat”. He changed the “Saudi
Founding Day”, the national day of Saudi Arabia, from that of the day of the
pact between al-Wahhab and King Saud in 1744, to February 22 when the Emirate
of Dir’iyah, the Saudi state, was first established by King Saud in the year
1727. He thus tried to distance Saudi identity from Wahhabism.
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Also Read: Udaipur Beheading:
Educated Muslims Say Not In My Name
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The United
Arab Emirates (UAE), too, is following suit. Rejecting the Wahhabist idea that
the Muslims of the world form one “Ummah”, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan,
the founding father of the UAE, had once declared, “Everyone on this earth is a
servant of god. We are all.” Marking a watershed moment in the
two-millennia-old history of the Catholic Church, in a first ever visit to the
Arab peninsula, Pope Francis visited the UAE in February 2019 on the invitation
of Sheikh Khalifa. There he signed a “Human Fraternity Document” together with
the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, Egypt, an important seat of Islamic
theology. “Open Islam, not a closed Islam”, Pope declared in exhilaration.
A year
later, in 2020, the UAE rulers had taken the historic step of signing an accord
with Israel, brokered by Donald Trump. The Jews, long regarded as enemies of
Islam, are today the closest friends of the UAE rulers. They even made a Torah,
especially in honour of the late Sheikh Zayed of the UAE.
The most
inspiring example comes from the world’s largest Islamic nation, Indonesia.
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the largest Islamic organisation in the country boasting
90 million membership and close links with the ruling government of Joko
Widodo, has openly come out against Wahhabism in a declaration in 2018. Calling
upon the Muslims to reject Wahhabi influence, the NU leadership insisted that
respecting nation-state and constitution was the duty of every Muslim
theologically. In other words, it rejected the concept that all Muslims are one
Ummah and asked them to develop patriotism first. In a historic declaration in
2021, it also proclaimed that nobody can be called a Kafir. The NU is taking a
unique and significant initiative of organising R-20 (Religions-20) on the side-lines
of G-20, which is going to be hosted by the Indonesian government in December
this year. R-20 will bring together leaders of all the important world
religions to assist the leaders of G-20 governments in building a united,
pluralist and peaceful world.
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Also Read: Udaipur Beheading: Educated Muslims Say Not In My
Name
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Hopefully,
these efforts will lead to the rejection of the Wahhabist exclusivism and the
violent and radicalised form of Islam for the larger good of the Muslims and
humanity.
This is a
civilisational battle. Reform needs courage. Lacking that courage, people
mostly become apologists or indulge in platitudes. It took 1,500 years and a
Martin Luther to boldly come out with his Ninety-five Theses to challenge the
Catholic Church’s orthodoxy in the 16th century that had set off a chain of
transformative reforms. Islam is into its 1,500 years now. Someone needs to
challenge the radical and revisionist interpretations of it. For, after all,
“there are no facts, only interpretations” in theological matters, as the
German philosopher Nietzsche put it.
Failing to
do that means acquiescing to the radicals, irrespective of the statements made
by the Imam of Jama Masjid or politicians like Asaduddin Owaisi. “If the battle
for civilisation comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians
are going to win”, warned American social philosopher Thomas Sowell.
But this
battle should be for reform of religions from radicalism. Doing it the wrong
way has the potential to convert catholic and inclusive religions like Hinduism
into their poor Semitised versions.
---
Ram
Madhav is a member of the National Executive of RSS and Member, Board of
Governors, India Foundation
Source: The
Battle for Religious Reform
New Age Islam, Islam
Online, Islamic
Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism