THE PHILOSOPHY AND ACTION
Asghar Ali Engineer
(Islam and Modern Age, March 2012)
An interesting seminar was held in Bangkok, Thailand from 28-29
January 2012 organised by AMAN (Asian Muslim Action Network) which is
an Asia wide organization with Muslim initiative for promoting
inter-religious peace, human rights and women's rights. There were
participants from several Asian countries like Philippine, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Thailand, India, Bangla Desh etc. Also, there were three
participants from Sweden who also took active part in the seminar and
made an interesting presentation.
Mr. Mohammad Sabur, the Secretary General of AMAN welcomed all the
participants and threw brief light on the purpose of the seminar. I,
as Chairman of AMAN, gave introductory remarks and purpose of the
seminar. I said that we often believe in certain philosophy or
ideology or religion but unfortunately our conduct is not entirely
determined by that belief or philosophy. That is why Qur'an asks a
relevant question why don't you do what you say (li ma taquluna ma la
taf'alun)?
The answer to this question is that human conduct is very complex one.
Human conduct is determined by several factors i.e. social, cultural,
geographical and above all one's own interest. A human actor may
convert to a religion, or ideology or philosophy but it is not
necessary that he/she would start implementing the tenets of that
religion, philosophy or ideology straight into action. Had it been so
our world would have been a perfect, peaceful and harmonious place to
live in.
Our world, despite more than 5 thousand years of history and hundreds
of prophets, seers and thinkers is still full of conflict, war and
bloodshed because of non-action and non-implementation of what we
believe in and what we profess to be our philosophy. And it is
precisely for this reason that we remind ourselves every year on great
persons and great thinkers' birth days what they preached and we
repeat this message year after year and yet implementation remains as
poor as it ever was.
As for we Muslims we celebrate Prophet's (PBUH) birth day every year
(Eid Miladun Nabi) and every year our Maulanas and Maulavis keep
telling us we must act according to the sirah (Prophet's life) and yet
we continue to behave as we were behaving all these years. Not only
this even those who preach – the Maulavis and Maulanas, do not ever
behave according to the sirah of the Prophet. There are hardly any
role model for us.
We make tall claims that Qur'an has given equal rights to man and
woman, that it is democratic in spirit, that it respects human rights
and several treatises have been written on that, that there is
complete freedom in Islam and so on. Why don't we critically think
whether these ideals are in practice? Do we treat our women equally?
Do we give them even those rights which Islam has given? We find all
sorts of excuses to deny them those rights and if someone advocates
those rights he/she is accused of being western feminist.
Thus we keep on contradicting ourselves in one breath. How many
Islamic countries have democracy? If at all democracy is being ushered
in, in some countries it is because of people's agitation, not because
Islam advocates it. Hundreds of people had to die to make democracy
acceptable in countries like Egypt, Libya, Tunisia etc. If we had gone
by tenets of Islam, there would have been democracy throughout
centuries.
Similarly human rights, though quite explicitly stated in Qur'an, was
always, and still is, a dirty word in several Islamic countries, Human
rights activists are also dubbed as foreign agents by dictatorial
rulers. And those who claim the Qur'an to be the only constitution (a
clever pretext to deny democracy) violate them most. If only Islamic
world had implemented the provisions of Qur'an they would have had
better world to live in today. But everywhere practice has never been
what has been preached.
And it is not with Islamic world alone. Western countries have been no
less hypocrates. The people of western countries sacrificed a great
deal to usher in renaissance, freedom and democracy. They had to
sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives for that purpose. But soon
democracy for their countries became imperialism and colonialism for
Asian and African countries. England, France, Germany, Italy and other
western powers reduced several Asian and African countries to their
colonies and denied democracy and freedom to peoples of these
countries.
These colonies had to fight against their colonial masters to achieve
their freedom in turn sacrificing thousands of lives. Just see how
bloody was the battle Algerians had to fight against France. What
Americans did in Congo for the sake of diamonds, killing Lumamba was
most shameful. Western powers never allowed genuine democracy to
function in these Afro-Asian and Latin American countries.
America, established several dictators in various Latin American
countries and reduced them to impotent Banana republic's and yet took
pride in America being a genuine democracy and ridiculed Russia for
being a dictatorial regime. Hollowness of its democratic claims is
being exposed in every day action. It destroyed both Afghanistan and
Iraq in the name of democracy. It used media for false propaganda
against Saddam and Taliban regime and killed hundreds of thousands of
people by its own weapons of mass destruction rather than finding any
weapon of mass destruction there.
America flagrantly supports Israel in killing innocent Palestinians in
thousands and supplies it with money and weapons for this purpose. It
does not speak a word against Israel possessing about 200 nuclear
weapons (even justifies it) while it is using every possible means
to make Iran give up its nuclear programme although Iran says it is
not meant for weaponization but only for developing nuclear power. And
all this even before International Atomic Energy Commission comes to
any final conclusion. Is it not hypocracy?
Israel claims to be a Jewish state but is doing everything possible to
violate teachings of Judaism. The behaviour of Israeli state is indeed
in conformity with Zionist ideology than Judaism. Qur'an, as is well
known accepts Judaism as religion of the people of the book and
throughout history relations between Muslims and Jews have been quite
cordial and Jews have lived in Muslim countries with peace and
security and even acted as high functionaries in the Muslim countries.
Jews were in fact persecuted by Christians.
Today western countries support Israel and consider Jews as friends.
Why? Because they have made Arabs as enemies of Jews and themselves as
friends of Jews for the sake of Arab oil. The Americans fear that
Arabs may stop supplies of oil and choke the wheels of their
industries so they have planted Israel in their midst so that they can
suppress Arabs with the help of Israel. It is nothing but a clever
strategy.
In order that it may not appear anti-Islam, they have also befriended
a section of Arab regimes like Saudi, Kuwait and other Gulf countries
and established their military bases there. These Arab countries also
need American help to suppress democratic aspirations of their own
people and for the sake of weapons they need not vis-à-vis Israel but
to suppress rebellion on the part of their own people.
Thus America is exploiting the situation it has cleverly created. On
one hand it controls Arab oil and on the other, it runs wheels of
military industrial complex on which American economy greatly depends.
No Government of America can ignore pressures of these industries and
their powerful lobbies. In the process they violate all possible
principles of democracy and freedom.
As for press freedom less said the better. It is a great illusion. The
media itself is totally controlled by powerful vested interests. What
is published in print media or shown on electronic media is so
carefully selected that while it may appear freedom of media, also, at
the same time serves the interests of media and industrial barons.
Common people who cannot see through the game keep on singing the
praises for freedom in America.
Yes, freedom is very fundamental value of democracy and only if
un-manipulated freedom were available to people in democracy things
would have been much different. However, as pointed out above, freedom
itself is cleverly manipulated to create an illusion of freedom and
then the vested interests exploit this very doctrine of freedom and
democracy in their own favour.
All this is being pointed out to show that philosophy of high morals
on one hand, and behaviour to the contrary by powerful vested
interests on the other, go hand in hand and that is why despite such
philosophies human beings continue to suffer. In theological terms we
can say that despite the fact that Allah sent 1,24,000 prophets the
people are still waiting for a messiah or Mahdi to rid it of
injustices and fill it with justice.
Allah promised in the Qur'an that it is on the side of the weaker
sections (mustad'ifun) and sent Prophets like Moses to liberate the
weak but the weak still are waiting for some Moses to liberate them
again and perhaps thereafter they will be weakened again and again
need a Moses or a Mahdi to liberate them again. This is going on
unending because we are not able to produce a human being whose
behaviour is free of selfish interests and free of all other
constrains.
We are still unable to free us of tradition of patriarchy and hence
women are unable to liberate themselves once for all. We will need
Qur'anic doctrines again and again to provide women with equal
opportunity. The women in most of the Muslim countries are far from
being equal. Even today the honour killing goes on and the killer gets
away with lighter punishment as talking to any stranger man or
marrying of her free will is considered as having dishonoured the
family.
Islam is strongly in favour of distributive justice and Qur'an exhorts
all believers to give away surplus wealth to the needy and advises
them to lead need based, not greed based life. According to certain
hadith men have been prohibited to wear gold ornament except a ring.
According to hadith Muslims have been prohibited to eat from gold and
silver vessels and yet the ruling classes of Muslims starting with
Umayyads indulged in luxuries unimaginable for ordinary believers.
Qur'an strongly condemns accumulation of wealth and there are several
verses to this effect in Qur'an and yet Muslims never desisted from
accumulation of wealth. Only Sufis adopted need-based style of life
but all other Muslims except those who were poor and economically
weak, all others believed in leading luxurious style of life. If these
Muslims had adopted Islamic philosophy poverty would have been wiped
out much before communism appeared in Eastern Europe.
As Marx famously said it is not enough for philosophers to interpret
the world but to change it and for change what is needed is praxis.
But sadly enough even communists were no exception. As Djilas of
Yugoslavia had shown in his book a privileged class came into
existence in Russia who enjoyed all privileges. It is common weakness
of human beings that those who wield power try to seize all possible
opportunities to have privileges. The Muslim ruling classes became
mainly feudal and lived off the land though the Prophet of Islam
(PBUH) had clearly banned share-cropping which amounts to exploitation
of a peasant.
Despite this unfortunately the Ulama did not condemn share-cropping as
they did riba' (interest). The main reason seems that while Qur'an
condemns riba' (though there is controversy as to what exactly the
word riba' means) whereas share-cropping has not been mentioned. But
Prophet (PBUH) condemned it when his attention was drawn to such a
practiced in some parts of Arabia.
Islam appeared in Mecca which was international centre of trade and
finance and riba' was practiced which was flagrantly exploitative
practice and hence Qur'an condemned it while in a predominantly desert
country there was not much of agricultural operation and hence Qur'an
did not mention this form of exploitation but the Prophet did.
However, in later history of Islam when centre of power shifted to
Central Asia which was predominantly agricultural area, feudal
practices like share-copping was prevailing and ruling class was
predominantly feudal, theologians and jurists maintained silence about
share-cropping and went on condemning riba' as trade ceased to be
central to the economy of these regions.
Baghdad, Egypt, Iran, India and similar other countries which became
centres of power, were all agricultural regions and share cropping a
common practice, it became approved form of practice and trade became
subservient to agriculture and hence riba' was much easier to condemn.
Riba' a form of compound interest, is highly exploitative and hence
Qur'an strongly condemns it but today its function has changed and
banking interest is not really as exploitative as the theologians and
jurists make it out to be and many among Islamic scholars feel that
banking interest could be permissible.
But since a section of Muslims did indulge in trade and needed
interest bearing transactions, the Muslim jurists did find ways and
means to indulge in these transactions in a way which would hide its
real nature. It was called hila (plural hiyal) or contrivance so that
interest could be legitimately charged and yet could not be called
interest but trade transaction. Thus what was unjust and exploitative
became just and non-exploitative.
Thus the whole problem is of philosophy in action. A philosophy, and
ideology, even though it appeals to us, we do not put it in practice
because either it goes against our interests or because it goes
against the predominant form of economic practices in the society as
shown above. Socio-economic structure and socio-cultural practices
play very important role in determining our practices.
Even if we want to practice a philosophy or ideology these factors
(socio-economic and socio-cultural) become powerful deterrent in our
practice. Another good example is of caste system in India. Even those
who oppose caste system and believe in equality of all, find it very
difficult to do away with caste in their day today life. Very deep is
the impact of socio-cultural factors.
The appeal of Islamic equality and brotherhood and sisterhood
attracted poor and backward masses but soon they discovered that
conversion to Islam hardly changed their low social status. Socially
they remained what they were before conversion. This is particularly
true of Indian sub-continent. One can see low caste Muslims in India
and Pakistan. Several studies have shown that these low caste Muslims
cannot even stand in first line to pray in a mosque. First few lines
in a mosque are always occupied by Muslims of high status.
Thus it will be seen that it is most challenging to put philosophy
into action and, as pointed out earlier it is so irrespective of
religion or ideology. In every such community based on egalitarian
philosophy or ideology some privileged classes come into existence
after a short initial period and these privileged classes are more
concerned with maintaining their privileges than the core teachings or
values of that philosophy. They do pay, however, lip service to those
values or teachings.
But more privileged you are, more you stress those values and less and
less you practice them.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Institute of Islamic Studies,
Mumbai.
E-mail: csss@mtnl.net.in
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