Post by Islamic Revival on Jun 20, 2005 12:18:21 GMT -5
What is wrong with the Ummah?
www.nation.com.pk/daily/june-2005/20/columns3.php
ROEDAD KHAN
I was in Washington D.C. on that fateful September day (September 11, 2001) which changed the world forever. President George W. Bush appeared on television and told Americans (and the world) that his campaign against terrorism would not be a war against Islam. Indeed, he hoped to enlist the support of such Muslim States as Iran, Egypt and Syria. It is unfortunate that he called his riposte a Crusade, because he could not have chosen a word more likely to antagonise Muslims all over the world.
Not surprisingly, as soon as, the first bomb dropped on Baghdad, the attack was condemned in the Arab world as “Al-Salibiyyah”! “A Crusade”! Arabs trace the war of aggression raging in Iraq back to November 25, 1095, when Pope Urban II summoned the expedition that would become known as the First Crusade. Before the Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem in July 1099 and savagely butchered 40,000 of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants, Jews, Christians and Muslims had lived together in Jerusalem under Islamic rule in peace and harmony for 460 years – almost half a millennium.
The Crusade changed all that. The hatred and suspicion that this expedition unleashed, still reverberates. Already more than 100,000 innocent men, women and children have been killed in Iraq alone. Is America bent on a new crusade against Islam? Judaism and America seem to have teamed up to subjugate and humiliate the Islamic world. Is history going to repeat itself?
Today the Islamic world is a prime target for America, the latest imperial power, virtuoso in the art of smashing Islamic countries and establishing its control over the remains. It has all the requirements to make it the perfect American target.
It has enormous natural resources; it has a rotten socio-political system in an advanced stage of decay and decomposition; its rulers are corrupt, despotic, authoritarian, unresponsive to the prime needs of the people, accountable to none; it lacks the will to defend itself because what its rulers represent is not worth defending; it is highly vulnerable to attack; a coup de grâce, or a coup de main, a powerful kick and the entire rotten structure will come crashing down.
At relatively little risk and cost, America can gain strategic advantages in the Islamic world and place itself increasingly in position to control the world’s resources and life lines. The aim is to gain control of the energy treasure house of the Gulf.
This is the darkest era in the history of Islam since the 13th century when the Mongols ransacked the Islamic world. Those who oppose American aggression are branded anti-American, terrorists and extremists. Afghanistan and Iraq, two sovereign, independent Muslims countries are under American military occupation.
“Anyone can see what happened in Iraq. It was nothing more than a war of colonial conquest fought for oil, dressed up as a crusade for western life and liberty. And its authors were a clique of war hungry Judeo-Christian geo-political fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America’s post-September 11 psychopathy”.
These words are not mine; they are spoken in John le Carres’s new novel “Absolute Friends” and all too accurately expose the true nature of the American war of aggression in Iraq. The truth is that it was a crime, not only against Iraqis but also against Americans. Come to think of it, is there any difference between the US invasion of Iraq and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait? Both were wars of aggression.
Today the United States and Britain are conducting a virtual crusade against the Islamic world to steal its oil and capture its resources. Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are next on the hit list. It is now abundantly clear that Pakistan, the only nuclear power in the Islamic world, will soon be denuclearised and emasculated.
The Islamic world contains the world’s greatest concentration of un-elected monarchs, military dictators, and usurpers, answerable to none, all supported by America. None would survive without American help. They seem more concerned with protecting themselves and their thrones than protecting their countries. Where, then, is the symbol of hope in a Muslim world ruled by charlatans and US protected and coddled despots?
About three years ago, these rulers met at Putrajaya to harness the Islamic world’s collective brainpower to turn the tide against Islam and seek solutions to the problems of the Ummah! The summit was attended by two Kings, two Sheikhs, a Sultan, a Prince, twenty Presidents and seven Prime Ministers.
It featured a surprise address by President Putin. The United States of America dominated the proceedings, despite its absence, and breathed down the neck of every member. What was Islamic about this motley crowd who gathered at Putrajaya? What was their locus standi and what were their credentials? What is Islamic about this incongruous mixture?
Islam is against hereditary monarchy and rejects the concept of privilege by descent, by birth, by status, by wealth, or even by race and insists that rank and honour are determined by piety and merit and nothing else.
How many of these Heads of state and government are elected? How many represent the will of their people? How many are usurpers who have imposed themselves on their docile subjects? How many are US appointees? How many are on the American payroll? How many would survive without American support? The capping irony is that this motley crowd will soon gather in Mecca to address the problems of the Ummah and re-enact the farce!
General Musharraf, a fervent believer in Ummah, said recently that Pakistan faced the biggest threat to its security from sectarian and religious extremism and terrorism within the country and vowed to eliminate such tendencies. “Internal chaos, sectarianism, and religious terrorism constitute a bigger threat owing to which the Ummah is suffering and the economy of the Muslim states is being negatively affected”.
Contrary to what President Musharraf says, the greatest threat to Pakistan, in fact the entire Ummah, stems not from religious militancy and secretarianism but from absence of legitimacy and a genuinely democratic political order, total lack of accountability and last but not least, surging American imperialism. Religious extremism and sectarianism are symptoms of a chronic malady, which has afflicted the Ummah since the demise of the Holy Prophet.
It is not a new phenomenon and will disappear with the spread of education and authentic democracy. American imperialism, on the other hand, poses an altogether different and much more dangerous threat. At the 58th Session of the UN General Assembly, Musharraf enunciated the strategy of “enlightened moderation” as a means to promote human emancipation. How can anyone, who loves freedom, expect Afghans or Iraqis groaning under American military occupation or Palestinians, driven from their homes 55 years ago, to respond with “enlightened moderation” to the presence of enemy troops on their soil and the loss of their freedom?
Islam attaches highest priority to the accountability of Muslim rulers. That is why, even an ordinary citizen of the Caliphate could challenge and demand account from the highest in the state. It was noon of a Friday. The faithful of Medina had gathered in the Prophet’s Mosque to offer the Friday prayers. Hadrat Umar, the Caliph, arrived to lead the prayers.
He said his preliminary prayer and then proceeded to deliver his address to the congregation. He began by reciting some verses from the Holy Quran. Then addressing the congregation, he said, “Now listen”. A young man from the congregation stood up to say, “we will not listen to you, until you give us the explanation that you owe us”.
The audience was startled at this audacious interference. Hadrat Umar paused for a moment and then turning to the young man said, “explanation for what”? The young man said, “The other day each one of us obtained a piece of cloth from the Baitul Mal. Today, I find two pieces of cloth on the person of the Caliph. I want to know what right had the Caliph to get a share twice the share of an ordinary Muslim”?
Before Hadrat Umar could explain, Abdullah, the son of Umar rose up and said, “Friends, the truth of the matter is that like every other person my father and myself obtained a piece of cloth each from the Baitul Mal. My father is so tall, that the piece of cloth that he got from the Baitul Mal did not suffice him. So I gave him my piece of the cloth”.
The explanation satisfied everyone. The young man who had interrupted the Caliph said, “We are satisfied. You can now proceed with your address. We will listen to you and obey your commands”!
Turning to the audience, Hadrat Umar said, “What will you do, my friends, in case I deviate from the truth one day”? Thereupon a man rose up and said, “when you, Umar, wilfully deviate from the truth, we will withdraw our allegiance to you and I for one would feel it my duty to kill you with my sword. I will straighten your deviation with the blade of my sword”.
The Caliph said with an apparent show of anger, “Man, do you know to whom you are speaking”? The man said, “Yes, I am talking to Hadrat Umar, the Commander of the Faithful”. “Then how dare you threaten him with your sword”, said the Caliph. The man said, “You are our Caliph and Commander as you long as you follow the truth. When you deliberately deviate from the path of truth, you no longer command our allegiance. Then we have the right to kill you, because you lead us in the wrong way”.
At this, the face of Hadrat Umar lit up, and a smile of satisfaction played on his lips. Raising his hands towards heaven, Umar said in a voice choked with emotion. “Great Allah, I offer you my thanks that there is no dearth of men among the faithful who have the courage to lift the sword even against the head of Umar when he deviates from the Truth”!
The decline of the Islamic world started when people stopped asking such questions and calling their rulers to account. Today people in the Islamic world stand passively mute. They are afraid to call the rulers to account. The spirit of protest is no longer there. People are besieged in their own country.
Today apathy in the Islamic world is the real enemy. Silence is its accomplice. Today Muslims are lost for a voice. Who in the Islamic world understands the forces of history and has the capacity to move them in a favourable direction? Who has the capacity to look out from a mountaintop, foresee the trend lines of the future, and bend history to serve the interests of the Ummah? Who has the capacity and will to channelise and guide the Muslim rage and take us on a journey into the future? Who has the courage to say “Kifaya”? “Enough”. “We have had enough”.
So, where the does the Ummah stand today? The short answer is that Ummah ceased to exist long ago and died, unsung and unwept. It died the day Mustafa Kemal abolished the Caliphate and disestablished Islam. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of a secular Turkey, the artificial creation of 21 “independent” Arab states, separated by international borders, each with its own national identity, flag, national anthem and other trappings of sovereignty, broke the sense of Ummah that had existed under the Caliphate.
OIC always reminds me of the League of Nations. When it was formed, Lenin described it as “A Thieves kitchen”. “I like the League”, Clemenceau famously remarked, “But I do not believe in it”. Nobody believes in OIC either, very few like it and is a non-starter. It is in a state of advanced decomposition. Why not give it a decent burial.
www.nation.com.pk/daily/june-2005/20/columns3.php
ROEDAD KHAN
I was in Washington D.C. on that fateful September day (September 11, 2001) which changed the world forever. President George W. Bush appeared on television and told Americans (and the world) that his campaign against terrorism would not be a war against Islam. Indeed, he hoped to enlist the support of such Muslim States as Iran, Egypt and Syria. It is unfortunate that he called his riposte a Crusade, because he could not have chosen a word more likely to antagonise Muslims all over the world.
Not surprisingly, as soon as, the first bomb dropped on Baghdad, the attack was condemned in the Arab world as “Al-Salibiyyah”! “A Crusade”! Arabs trace the war of aggression raging in Iraq back to November 25, 1095, when Pope Urban II summoned the expedition that would become known as the First Crusade. Before the Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem in July 1099 and savagely butchered 40,000 of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants, Jews, Christians and Muslims had lived together in Jerusalem under Islamic rule in peace and harmony for 460 years – almost half a millennium.
The Crusade changed all that. The hatred and suspicion that this expedition unleashed, still reverberates. Already more than 100,000 innocent men, women and children have been killed in Iraq alone. Is America bent on a new crusade against Islam? Judaism and America seem to have teamed up to subjugate and humiliate the Islamic world. Is history going to repeat itself?
Today the Islamic world is a prime target for America, the latest imperial power, virtuoso in the art of smashing Islamic countries and establishing its control over the remains. It has all the requirements to make it the perfect American target.
It has enormous natural resources; it has a rotten socio-political system in an advanced stage of decay and decomposition; its rulers are corrupt, despotic, authoritarian, unresponsive to the prime needs of the people, accountable to none; it lacks the will to defend itself because what its rulers represent is not worth defending; it is highly vulnerable to attack; a coup de grâce, or a coup de main, a powerful kick and the entire rotten structure will come crashing down.
At relatively little risk and cost, America can gain strategic advantages in the Islamic world and place itself increasingly in position to control the world’s resources and life lines. The aim is to gain control of the energy treasure house of the Gulf.
This is the darkest era in the history of Islam since the 13th century when the Mongols ransacked the Islamic world. Those who oppose American aggression are branded anti-American, terrorists and extremists. Afghanistan and Iraq, two sovereign, independent Muslims countries are under American military occupation.
“Anyone can see what happened in Iraq. It was nothing more than a war of colonial conquest fought for oil, dressed up as a crusade for western life and liberty. And its authors were a clique of war hungry Judeo-Christian geo-political fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America’s post-September 11 psychopathy”.
These words are not mine; they are spoken in John le Carres’s new novel “Absolute Friends” and all too accurately expose the true nature of the American war of aggression in Iraq. The truth is that it was a crime, not only against Iraqis but also against Americans. Come to think of it, is there any difference between the US invasion of Iraq and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait? Both were wars of aggression.
Today the United States and Britain are conducting a virtual crusade against the Islamic world to steal its oil and capture its resources. Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are next on the hit list. It is now abundantly clear that Pakistan, the only nuclear power in the Islamic world, will soon be denuclearised and emasculated.
The Islamic world contains the world’s greatest concentration of un-elected monarchs, military dictators, and usurpers, answerable to none, all supported by America. None would survive without American help. They seem more concerned with protecting themselves and their thrones than protecting their countries. Where, then, is the symbol of hope in a Muslim world ruled by charlatans and US protected and coddled despots?
About three years ago, these rulers met at Putrajaya to harness the Islamic world’s collective brainpower to turn the tide against Islam and seek solutions to the problems of the Ummah! The summit was attended by two Kings, two Sheikhs, a Sultan, a Prince, twenty Presidents and seven Prime Ministers.
It featured a surprise address by President Putin. The United States of America dominated the proceedings, despite its absence, and breathed down the neck of every member. What was Islamic about this motley crowd who gathered at Putrajaya? What was their locus standi and what were their credentials? What is Islamic about this incongruous mixture?
Islam is against hereditary monarchy and rejects the concept of privilege by descent, by birth, by status, by wealth, or even by race and insists that rank and honour are determined by piety and merit and nothing else.
How many of these Heads of state and government are elected? How many represent the will of their people? How many are usurpers who have imposed themselves on their docile subjects? How many are US appointees? How many are on the American payroll? How many would survive without American support? The capping irony is that this motley crowd will soon gather in Mecca to address the problems of the Ummah and re-enact the farce!
General Musharraf, a fervent believer in Ummah, said recently that Pakistan faced the biggest threat to its security from sectarian and religious extremism and terrorism within the country and vowed to eliminate such tendencies. “Internal chaos, sectarianism, and religious terrorism constitute a bigger threat owing to which the Ummah is suffering and the economy of the Muslim states is being negatively affected”.
Contrary to what President Musharraf says, the greatest threat to Pakistan, in fact the entire Ummah, stems not from religious militancy and secretarianism but from absence of legitimacy and a genuinely democratic political order, total lack of accountability and last but not least, surging American imperialism. Religious extremism and sectarianism are symptoms of a chronic malady, which has afflicted the Ummah since the demise of the Holy Prophet.
It is not a new phenomenon and will disappear with the spread of education and authentic democracy. American imperialism, on the other hand, poses an altogether different and much more dangerous threat. At the 58th Session of the UN General Assembly, Musharraf enunciated the strategy of “enlightened moderation” as a means to promote human emancipation. How can anyone, who loves freedom, expect Afghans or Iraqis groaning under American military occupation or Palestinians, driven from their homes 55 years ago, to respond with “enlightened moderation” to the presence of enemy troops on their soil and the loss of their freedom?
Islam attaches highest priority to the accountability of Muslim rulers. That is why, even an ordinary citizen of the Caliphate could challenge and demand account from the highest in the state. It was noon of a Friday. The faithful of Medina had gathered in the Prophet’s Mosque to offer the Friday prayers. Hadrat Umar, the Caliph, arrived to lead the prayers.
He said his preliminary prayer and then proceeded to deliver his address to the congregation. He began by reciting some verses from the Holy Quran. Then addressing the congregation, he said, “Now listen”. A young man from the congregation stood up to say, “we will not listen to you, until you give us the explanation that you owe us”.
The audience was startled at this audacious interference. Hadrat Umar paused for a moment and then turning to the young man said, “explanation for what”? The young man said, “The other day each one of us obtained a piece of cloth from the Baitul Mal. Today, I find two pieces of cloth on the person of the Caliph. I want to know what right had the Caliph to get a share twice the share of an ordinary Muslim”?
Before Hadrat Umar could explain, Abdullah, the son of Umar rose up and said, “Friends, the truth of the matter is that like every other person my father and myself obtained a piece of cloth each from the Baitul Mal. My father is so tall, that the piece of cloth that he got from the Baitul Mal did not suffice him. So I gave him my piece of the cloth”.
The explanation satisfied everyone. The young man who had interrupted the Caliph said, “We are satisfied. You can now proceed with your address. We will listen to you and obey your commands”!
Turning to the audience, Hadrat Umar said, “What will you do, my friends, in case I deviate from the truth one day”? Thereupon a man rose up and said, “when you, Umar, wilfully deviate from the truth, we will withdraw our allegiance to you and I for one would feel it my duty to kill you with my sword. I will straighten your deviation with the blade of my sword”.
The Caliph said with an apparent show of anger, “Man, do you know to whom you are speaking”? The man said, “Yes, I am talking to Hadrat Umar, the Commander of the Faithful”. “Then how dare you threaten him with your sword”, said the Caliph. The man said, “You are our Caliph and Commander as you long as you follow the truth. When you deliberately deviate from the path of truth, you no longer command our allegiance. Then we have the right to kill you, because you lead us in the wrong way”.
At this, the face of Hadrat Umar lit up, and a smile of satisfaction played on his lips. Raising his hands towards heaven, Umar said in a voice choked with emotion. “Great Allah, I offer you my thanks that there is no dearth of men among the faithful who have the courage to lift the sword even against the head of Umar when he deviates from the Truth”!
The decline of the Islamic world started when people stopped asking such questions and calling their rulers to account. Today people in the Islamic world stand passively mute. They are afraid to call the rulers to account. The spirit of protest is no longer there. People are besieged in their own country.
Today apathy in the Islamic world is the real enemy. Silence is its accomplice. Today Muslims are lost for a voice. Who in the Islamic world understands the forces of history and has the capacity to move them in a favourable direction? Who has the capacity to look out from a mountaintop, foresee the trend lines of the future, and bend history to serve the interests of the Ummah? Who has the capacity and will to channelise and guide the Muslim rage and take us on a journey into the future? Who has the courage to say “Kifaya”? “Enough”. “We have had enough”.
So, where the does the Ummah stand today? The short answer is that Ummah ceased to exist long ago and died, unsung and unwept. It died the day Mustafa Kemal abolished the Caliphate and disestablished Islam. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of a secular Turkey, the artificial creation of 21 “independent” Arab states, separated by international borders, each with its own national identity, flag, national anthem and other trappings of sovereignty, broke the sense of Ummah that had existed under the Caliphate.
OIC always reminds me of the League of Nations. When it was formed, Lenin described it as “A Thieves kitchen”. “I like the League”, Clemenceau famously remarked, “But I do not believe in it”. Nobody believes in OIC either, very few like it and is a non-starter. It is in a state of advanced decomposition. Why not give it a decent burial.
