Need to follow true Islam

“IF you have any tears, prepare to shed them, now,” said Mark Antony to the Romans over the corpse of Julius Caesar. The predicament Muslims today are facing at the demise of their self-esteem is far more poignant. The faith that, with its magic had, once upon a time, tamed wild and rough people into polite, soft-speaking humans; welded warring tribes into a selfless fraternity; turned slaves into masters and desert nomads into rulers, seems to have lost not only its fire but even its warmth.

Allah had hailed Muslims as “the best community” (3:110). They should have, therefore, been the ones to hold their heads high and put their chests out not just as the recipients of His final Message, but especially because that Message is preserved intact, in its original purity. The Prophet (PBUH) was a historical person. Each and every event of his life has been faithfully chronicled by unimpeachable sources. Every word of the Divine Revelation was both memorised by more persons than one and promptly written down. Their Book is the Mother of all Books — ummul kitab.

Islam is not peace only in name. It bends farther backwards than any other religion in pursuing peace and avoiding conflict. No other religion declares that taking an innocent life is like killing the entire humanity and vice versa (5:32). None offers anything comparable to the Peace of Hudaibiya or the Covenant of Medina. None can produce an injunction like “stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourself, or your parents, or your kin ..” (4:133).

Talk of meekness? Which religion tempers its sanction for retaliation with strict prohibition against any excess? Which commands its followers to revere all prophets from Adam (A.S.) to Muhammad (S.A.W.) as Messengers of Allah, “making no distinction between one and another” (2:285). Which lays down, “Revile not ye those whom they call upon besides Allah, lest they out of spite, revile Allah in their ignorance. (6:108)?

It is therefore a miracle to find some reputed scholars from the “other” camp, coming to Islam’s defence with a vigour that many Muslims should envy. One such is Richard Bonny, an eminent Christian scholar, who, after an exhaustive study of the subject of jihad, highlights its noble spirit by contrasting it particularly with the outright massacre permitted in the Jewish herem.

Robert Winston, a practising, hard core Jew and a renowned scientist, is another. As if improving upon Bonney he says, “jihad is certainly not ‘holy war’ to convert non-believers. This is a stereotype which was promulgated by Christian crusaders... while Muslims encourage conversion it is never regarded as acceptable to force a person to accept Muhammad’s message”

To emphasise that Islam requires believers to be patient with non-believers rather than put them to the sword as many non-Muslim writers allege, Winston quotes 73:10: “Bear with patience what they say, and when they leave give a courteous farewell,” and 86:17: “Deal gently with un-believers; give them enough time [to change their minds]” This is refreshing departure from “There is no compulsion in religion (2:256)” that Muslims invariably quote.

“Islam is no more a warlike faith”, says Winston. “Although the word Islam means ‘surrender,’ it actually has the same root as shalom in Hebrew, meaning ‘peace.’” Discussing the basic features of (armed) jihad he concludes, “Consequently, it is a profound misrepresentation to believe that jihad covers wars of aggression, border disputes, the intention to colonise, or acts of terrorism or indiscriminate bombing.”

Sharia is another bee in the non-Muslims’ bonnet. And Muslims seem unable to face up to the charges levelled particularly against some of the penalties under sharia. Here, too, Robert Winston offers a robust defence for the punishments for theft and adultery and the requirement that the sentences be carried out in public.

On the amputation issue he quotes the New Testament (Mark 9:43) where Jesus says, ‘If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better to enter life maimed, than with two hands go to hell ..’

Similarly he points out that the preconditions prescribed to prove the crime of adultery make it practically impossible to execute the punishment. And, finally, explaining the requirement that a legal sentence of punishment be carried out publicly, he says, “This is not done to please a bloodthirsty or sadistic people but to ensure that justice is seen to be done and that punishment does not exceed what has been prescribed.”

The Jews too have their universities and educational institutions for orthodox teaching. The Hasidic Jews wear a particular kind of dress that seems outlandish to the modern eye. Yet they are not denounced as obscurantist or backward. When a ranking rabbi declines to shake the hand of Mrs. Laura Bush there are no frowns.

What then is the secret of the Judeo-Christians’ self-confidence and the Muslims’ self-consciousness? Why do Muslims wear a crestfallen, guilty look? Writers invariably attribute their decadence to their loss of interest in the pursuit of inquiry and in learning other disciplines. The madressah exemplifies it best. It was a noble institution from which the West adopted the practice of graduation ceremonies with the tassels and the robes. Today it produces batches of zombies, to be hired only to lead prayers, salmons marriages or perform the last rites for the dead.

But lack of knowledge in other disciplines is not the only factor. Another equally critical shortcoming is the lack of knowledge about other religions. To fight your enemy you must know what weapons he uses. The graduates of the theological universities of the Jews and Christians are not only abreast of the latest in other disciplines; they also delve into the Quran and hadith even if to twist their meaning.

It should be clearly understood that Islam and Quran do not depend for their protection and glory on anyone. Allah has declared: “Without a question We have sent down the Message and We will assuredly guard it.” (Hijr: 9). If, therefore, Muslims opt to deviate from the straight path, they would not at all harm Him or Islam but invite doom for themselves. The truth of this statement is evident from the situation Muslims are facing today. The only way for us to avoid being kicked about is to resuscitate our self-esteem by investigating where we went wrong and rediscovering the magic that had shot Muslims to the highest pinnacles of fame in the past.

Another way for Iraq?

ON Monday, to mark the third anniversary of President Bush’s appearance on the USS Lincoln to announce that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada issued a news release in which Bush’s text was set in contrast to barbed reminders of everything that has gone wrong in Iraq since that boast.

It was a rhetorical low blow, apparently aimed at further weakening public support for the war but offering no alternative strategy for ending it.

That same morning, another senator, Joe Biden of Delaware, set forth a much more useful and responsible approach in a speech to the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia; in a New York Times op-ed written with Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations; and in a phone interview with me as he drove from Philadelphia to Washington.

Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a supporter of the war who — like John McCain — has been a consistent critic of the administration’s military strategy and diplomacy. This week, after his sixth trip to the war zone, he said that the threat of sectarian violence — an incipient civil war between Shias and Sunnis — has become so great that the United States must redefine its political goals in Iraq. Instead of betting everything on the creation of a unified government in Baghdad, Biden said, we should encourage the development of separate but linked regional authorities in northern Iraq for the Kurds, in southern Iraq for the Shias and in central Iraq for the Sunnis.

The current constitution gives the 18 provinces of Iraq the right to form regional groups. Biden would retain control of defence, foreign policy and oil resources for the central government now on the way to formation, but he would let the regional governments largely run their own affairs.

This is, he told me, not a call for partition. It is a recognition of what he considers a reality — that the component parts of Iraqi society need “breathing space” to adjust their relations, rather than continue down the present road, where militias loyal to one side or the other are engaged in wanton killing and ethnic cleansing.

It is this violence that poses the main threat to Iraq’s security now and that makes it impossible for the American forces to set a departure date.

Biden’s view is that Sunnis will continue to support the insurgency rather than accept a unified government in which Shias dominate and in which oil revenue is monopolised by the Kurds in the north and the Shias in the south. Give them a territory of their own, in the centre, and guarantee them a share — say 20 percent — of the national oil revenue, and they will consider themselves well rewarded.

The Shias in turn would know that they would continue their leading role in the national government but would not face a virulent insurgency supported by Sunnis.—Dawn/Washington Post Service

Poverty: the ticking time bomb

THE newspapers of May Day (May 1) tell us that the petroleum prices are up by 7.2 per cent. Kerosene oil saw the highest increase (7.2 per cent) followed by diesel oil which is up by 5.1 per cent. These two items have a high impact on that part of the economy which affects the poor masses because kerosene is used by the poor in remote areas of the country for cooking.

Diesel is used in trucks which transport goods, including food items, all over the land. This means that the poorest sections of society will pay in indirect taxes — most of the rise in petroleum products goes to the state — for the upkeep of a huge army, an expensive bureaucracy and the paraphernalia which go with the state machinery.

But there have always been the poor and the rich, so what is the big deal now? Why should we make such a song and dance about the whole thing? Well, there are several answers to that. First, that poverty is a creation of human policies; it need not exist. Second, that there is so much glorification of the market forces and globalisation that there is an urgent need to point out what exactly is happening right before our eyes.

For one thing, privatisation brings in the concept of downsizing. The Habib Bank Limited, for instance, has retrenched over 2,3000 employees. No doubt they will have cash dole-outs and alternative employment but cash, as we all know, disappears in unwise investments or inflation to say nothing about the greed of the relatives who often kill the goose which lays the golden eggs — and this goose, in any case, won’t be in the business of laying eggs. As for jobs, they are not half as good as the HBL jobs were. Similarly, the PTCL is being transferred to a UAE-based communications firm (Etisalat). Now the PTCL employs 13 workers per 1,000 lines while Etisalat employs only two. It stands to reason that the extra ones will have to go at some stage.

The general trend in this era of privatisation is to get rid of the extra employees who had been inducted simply because there is an army of unemployed people whose children would not eat the day their parents came home without money. Sure, the process was inefficient and corrupt; sure, one got employed if one knew a powerful patron; and sure, all these extra people tended to make things run slowly and not very efficiently. But the alternative is that the army of the unemployed will multiply. The presence of such large numbers of unemployed people is a ticking time bomb which we can ill afford.

What makes the poor feel more disgruntled than before is that our society is undergoing rapid change. Agrarian societies had a greater capacity to absorb their poor because they grew slowly and were fatalistic. Children died in such large numbers — as indeed did older people — that they did not threaten to explode. Nowadays, modern medicine saves many children but the worldview which makes for lower fertility has still to become common. Fatalism made for political quietism and reconciliation to one’s fate.

Moreover, the kinship system provided some kind of sustenance to the never-do-gooders. The state also provided cheap, if rather shoddy, services. Government schools taught children, hospitals provided some kind of medical care and red omnibuses plied the rather pot-holed roads.

Globalisation, structural adjustment, market forces — these terms are not known to the people of Pakistan. They do not know what has hit them. But, since about two decades, the rich are getting very rich and the very poor are getting so wretchedly poor that they take to crime or, if they are weak and pessimistic, commit suicide. But what makes the situation dangerous is that people know — thanks to the ubiquitous media — that when a thousand low-paid people are laid off their jobs, the few who are hired in their place right at the top get such fabulous salaries that people are simply dumbfounded.

The national payscale system, which was differentiated enough with 22 grades already, has now been reserved for those who cannot escape from state jobs. The smart bureaucrat land international jobs; the military waits for retirement (which, thank God, is early) after which there are many lucrative jobs to say nothing of plots of land and subsidised houses; and even the academics, who used to be pretty laid back earlier, now opt for private employment or more money from the public sector.

What is wrong with this is that the system — however unjust it was — is now so chaotic that people feel they should grab whatever they can. Consider, if even a small percentage of the unemployed start feeling that the country is up for grabs, what is going to happen? They will take to individual crime — which, as we all know, is increasing. They may take to rioting which, one feels, starts on the slightest provocation.

The cartoon controversy is a case in point when public outrage was so high partly because the people were fed up. The increase in sugar prices, which is still with us, had just hit the headlines. It must have created the fury which boiled over when the provocation occurred.

As I claim no expertise in economics I cannot judge whether Pakistan’s economy is improving or not. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz tells us it is but then he is talking about dollars in the national treasury. But even here one has one’s doubts since The Economic Freedom of the World (2005) report tell us that:

— Despite de-nationalisation, privatisation, de-regulation and liberalisation, we are moving down on the scale of economic freedom: last year our score was 5.7, and ranking 90; this year it is 5.6 and 98 respectively.

— That we are bracketed with poor countries such as Mali and Papua New Guinea and Bangladesh has a better ranking of 96. India is even better being 66 on the scale.

So, not all economists buy the report of the success story Pakistan is becoming. But let us not bother about economists just now. Let us just open our eyes to the misery around us. In the slums of the city children labour 16 hours a day making candles, carpets, plastic bags and other items — some termed ‘hazardous’ — and get a pittance for their efforts.

Drs Shahrukh Rafi Khan, Saba Khattak and Sajid Kazmi wrote a book Hazardous Home Based Labour, Oxford University Press, 2005) on this subject which concluded that women and children expose themselves to all kinds of dangers, including fatal illnesses, to make just enough to keep body and soul together. The coal mines in Balochistan employ children of 13 who get illnesses of the lungs because the coal dust they inhale for 16 hours a day simply corrodes their bodies.

Bonded labourers in brick kilns get Rs 60 for making a thousand bricks which are sold for Rs 4,000. And one need not even read reports giving these details. All one needs to do is to find out what people earn and then see how much food can be bought with that much money. Try to find out how much your servant earns, how many people he or she feeds and then buy food — only food — with that much money for yourself. I bet you will be shocked because if one eats only bread and dal with only a little vegetable, one needs about Rs 2,000 rupees for a family of four. Now consider how many people get even this much and at what cost.

Is this not a ticking time bomb? Does it not have the potential to translate into bloody riots in which people will get hurt? And, even more alarmingly, won’t the revolutionary idiom be the idiom of Islam? I leave this to you to guess.