The Poisoned Iftar

VIEW: The poisoned Iftar
By Syed Mansoor Hussain
Daily Times, October 19, 2006

Muslims have definitely been less aggressive in their fifteen hundred odd year history than Christians were during their two thousand years. Muslims have rarely embarked upon the sort of religious warfare that was a part of Christianity well into the seventeenth century

For years I have felt bad as a Muslim. There’s much indeed to feel bad about: sectarian violence, Muslims killing each other even in mosques, intellectual backwardness and so on, the list is long and makes for tortuous reading. But this week has been particularly bad since I read the news that dozens of Muslim policemen were reportedly poisoned in Baghdad as they broke their fast. Poisoning an Iftar? Is this what we have come to, and become?

Apologists will spout the usual nonsense: Islam is the religion of peace and true believers cannot perpetrate such violence. Clearly and sadly, it is belief rather than its absence that makes people indulge in such behaviour. The recent conniption about the Pope and his indirect assertion that Islam condones violence has raised some ire within the Muslim community. The fact is that absoluteness of belief, religious or secular, is frequently the precursor of violence.

Salman Raja in an excellent essay published in this paper pointed out that even within a Pakistan awash in enlightened moderation, government policy as well as mainstream religious thought continues to support violence in the name of religion. Muslims are not unique in this. All systems of belief presume non-believers who are by definition different and possibly ‘evil’. And if the believers believe in conversion, they are prone to violence against non-believers.

In this context, the Muslims have definitely been less aggressive in their fifteen hundred odd year history than Christians were during their two thousand years. Muslims have rarely embarked upon the sort of religious warfare that was a part of Christianity well into the seventeenth century. The Pope, when he called Islam a religion of violence, was being entirely disingenuous. His own faith visited much more violence on ‘non-believers’ than Islam ever did.

That said, Muslims today are about as prone to violence in the name of religion as Christians once were. While most Christians have given up on direct violence as a means of religious expression, Muslims have adopted it with a vengeance. As a matter of historical fact, all the great Muslim empires were more inclusive compared to contemporaneous Christian empires. The Muslim empire in the Iberian Peninsula was functionally secular in as much that most of its citizens were non-Muslim and they were allowed to follow the faith of their choice without official interference.

The same is true of the Mughals in India, and even of the Ottomans. If indeed Islam were spread by the sword, why would there be any Christians left in Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Cyprus, Greece, and the Balkans and of course India, and, any Jews in what was the Ottoman Empire? One can compare this with the total absence of all Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula after the ‘re-conquest’ by Catholicism. But here, the good part ends.

The history of the Muslims unfortunately also suggests that all attempts at rationalism within Islam were crushed for good quite a while ago. Ibn Rushd, the greatest of the rationalist Muslims, was hounded it would seem to an early grave and the Mu’tazila, the so-called rationalists within Islam, were decimated to the point of non-existence. The great Imam Ghazzali essentially closed the doors of objective enquiry within Islam to protect it from the ‘malign’ efforts at rationalisation.

If at all there has been any debate within Islam since then, it is of little consequence. The body of religious practice as well as acceptable thought is firmly grounded in that time. A few hundred years ago, the Mughal Emperor Akbar and his great-grandson, Dara Shikoh attempted to make Islam more inclusive, at least in the context of India. Their detractors saw this as heterodoxy and all attempts at inclusiveness ended completely with the death of Dara Shikoh and his entire family at the hand of his brother, later known as Aurangzeb Alamgir.

Moreover, Sufism, traditionally the most important counterweight to orthodoxy within Islam, has been beaten into submission. Other than ritual obeisance, little of the ferment and enquiry that constituted Sufism is extant. As far as philosophy or rational enquiry as a discipline is concerned, it no longer exists as an intellectual force within Islam. Any discussion about religion that happens among Muslims today is held only within the rigidly defined boundaries of the accepted religious sub-sects (fiqh) established centuries ago.

Any attempt to step out of those limits is fraught with charges of apostasy and the possibility of an early demise. Even the great Allama was forced to say almost seventy years ago when discussing the need for ‘change’ within Islam that: “Unfortunately, the conservative Muslim public of this country is not yet quite ready for a critical discussion of Fiqh, which, if undertaken, is likely to displease most people, and raise sectarian controversies...” Wisely, he limited such ruminations to his work in English and possibly Persian.

Little has changed since then; if at all, things have probably gotten worse. The best defence modern Muslim apologists offer for the sad state of Muslims the world over is that Islam is a perfect religion but its followers are somehow deficient. Reminds me of an old aphorism about medicine. The best medicine is worthless if most patients who try it cannot tolerate it and so cannot benefit from it.

An interesting counterpoint to the present intellectual paralysis among Muslims is the attempt by a ‘believing’ Jew to ‘blog’ the Bible. (David Plotz-Blogging the Bible in Slate Magazine). Plotz looks at the Old Testament chapter by chapter from the perspective of a Jew living in this century. His opinions are his own but I wonder if any Muslim would even dare to do the same to the Quran? And, if anybody even tried, would they not soon become victims of a ‘fatwa’ demanding their death?

For most non-Muslims, Islam is what Muslims do.

Syed Mansoor Hussain has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com