May 14, 2008
Promote the faith, not the tribe
Tarek Fatah,
National Post
National Post
Iqbal was an early convert to Kamal Ataturk's republican secularism -- the foundation of the modern Turkish state. In his seminal work The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Iqbal wrote: "Such is the attitude of the modern Turk, inspired as he is by the realities of experience, and not by the scholastic reasoning of jurists who lived and thought under different conditions of life... that if rightly appreciated, indicate the birth of an International ideal, which forming the very essence of Islam, has been hitherto overshadowed or rather displaced by Arabian Imperialism..."
Khaled Al-Sayed, AFP, Getty Images
The tenuous bond between the Arab and the non-Arab Muslim has, over the centuries, created a love-hate relationship, often one-sided and rarely discussed. While non-Arab Muslims have embraced many facets of Arabian culture and custom, the gesture has rarely ever been reciprocated. Whether it has been the feeble relationship between the Berbers and Arabs, or the never-ending mutual mistrust between Persians and the Arabs, this chasm is largely unnoticed in the Arab world. Iqbal's reference to "Arabian Imperialism" would elicit shock and denunciation from even the most liberal Arab; such is the state of denial.
Canada's late comparative religion scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith broached the subject of Arabism and Islam. In his book Islam in Modern History, he wrote about the "Arab's pride" in the context of "Arab glory and frustration." He maintained that while Arab Muslims are proud of their faith like other non-Arab Muslims, the difference is that "in the Arab's case this pride in Islam is not separate from his national enthusiasm, but infuses it and gives it added point." He went on to say, "Muslim Arabs have never quite acknowledged… either that a non-Muslim is really a complete Arab, or that a non-Arab is really a complete Muslim."
Thus, while the proponents of an Islamic state in Malaysia or Somalia would consider the adoption of Arab culture and custom as part of their Islamicized identity, the advocates of the Islamic State in Egypt would never even contemplate adopting any Indonesian or Nigerian cultural expressions. The dysfunctional nature of this relationship has manifested most adversely in South Asia and the Indo-Pakistani Muslim Diaspora. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who up to 1946 taught in the then Indian city of Lahore -- now capital of Pakistani Punjab -- suggests that in the Arab World, Islamist ideology is not an expression of religiosity, but one of patriotic ownership.
Few in either the Arab or non-Arab Muslim world have talked about this chasm in the Ummah that finds its roots in the tribal and racial supremacy that was given legitimacy in early Islam. The abolition of the caliphate was seen by many Muslim modernists as a chance to break free from the past and step into the future.
Arabs too need to break free of the past. They have suffered at the hands of colonialism, going back to the 15th century. Repeated wars, oppressive dictatorships and an Islamist upsurge have made things worse. Theirs is a just struggle seriously compromised by an inept leadership that has sold them out more than once.
The Arabs were the first Muslims and the rest of the Muslim world cares deeply for them. However, there is a serious lack of reciprocity in this relationship. Many Arabs approach the subject of Islam as if it were their gift to the rest of the world, not God's gift to humanity. Any critique by non-Arab Muslims of the Arab world's woes is seen as an insult to Arab pride, and invariably elicits a prediactable response -- the hurtful charge of being an agent of Israel. It would not be a stretch to say that Arabs today need leadership, not land.
Arabs have much to be proud of. They have contributed more than their share to human civilization, but they also need to fight internalized racism that places darker-coloured fellow Muslims from Africa and Asia on a lower rung of society. Taking "ownership" of Islam as if it were a brand name that didn't have to be practised, but merely protected and projected, has made us lose the very essence of the message of Muhammad. The relationship between Arab and non-Arab must be one of respect and dignified equality, not one of the Arab and his Mawali, the derogatory medieval term in arabic reserved for non-Arab muslims who were considred second class in Arabian society.
- Reprinted with permission of the publisher, John Wiley & sons Canada. Copyright Tarek Fatah, 2008.
TOMORROW
Tarek Fatah examines shariah law, human rights and the Islamic state
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