Decline of Islamic Civilizations – Causes

– Time for a New Paradigm

By Mirza A. Beg
24 July, 2006
Countercurrents.org

Synopsis:

It is normal for people to take pride in their past. Muslims take pride in the great Islamic
civilizations as well. In pre-modern times many civilizations flourished simultaneously, often
with contentious interaction at the overlapping fringes, where they interacted learnt from
each other, and at times grated and collided under the weight of the Empires.

Nostalgia is soothing, but to meet the challenges of the future, one should learn from the
past, not live in it. The indignities suffered from others should be a lesson for betterment,
not an excuse for indolence or revenge that perpetuate rather than heal the wounds.

With fast communications the world has truly become so interdependent that all natural,
environmental as well as cultural developments have global effects and therefore there is no
insulation from events. No place is distant any more, every one affects every one else.

In this small world a new paradigm should emerge- that of a composite world civilization
with every one being a contributor. Western civilization is not a Christian civilization
though it has Christian roots. Indians, Chinese and many other civilizations have made great
contributions in the past and are on the rise again. Muslims can not go back to exclusively
insulated Islamic civilization. Islam never preached insulation. Muslims have a wonderful
opportunity to affect the future by boldly practicing the peace and social justice that Islam
preaches.

Introduction - Civilization:

Civilizations rise and decay, empires rise and fall. They may at times be coeval, but have
different dynamics. Empire building entails hegemony of a people over others, expressed in
the person of the ruler, often with manipulated religious trappings. Civilization is the
flourishing of excellence of a civic idea, supported by peaceful flowering of the arts and
pursuit of knowledge in which many ethnicities and religions may participate.

Empires may rise and fall precipitously, but civilizations take generations to rise and recede.
The reasons for rise and fall of empires are less complex than the rise and decay of
civilizations. One clear difference is that empires require the power of arms, while the
civilizations require the power of ideas, nurtured by people who work towards the
betterment of the society in comparative ease with considerable freedom of thought and
action. When ideas have to be forced on the people, the system of justice suffers. If a sizable

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minority does not find peace and justice, inevitably the civilization strangles itself and
decays.

The glory days of the Islamic civilization spanned more than a thousand years. The Islamic
civilization was an evolving continuum while many Muslim Empires rose, fell and preyed on
each other. Muslim intellectuals have been searching for the reasons of decline of the Islamic
Civilizations for at least the last three centuries.

Popular opinions on the decay of Islamic Civilizations:

The most prevalent diagnoses and remedies for the decay of Islamic civilizations fall in two
categories. The most popular view seems to be that the Muslims have veered away from the
teachings of Islam. The remedy offered is, “If only we became good Muslims, we would
regain the momentum and revive the grandeur of the past.”

The second conventional view is that our travails started with the ascendance of the West. It
led to eventual Western colonialism of Muslim lands and its materialistic hegemony stifled
the Islamic Civilizations. The popular remedy suggested is that we should get away from
materialism, support education with the spiritualism of Islam to be the leaders again.

Both observations are partly correct but confuse causes and effects. Not that the West has
not been hegemonic and should not be blamed. Yielding uncritically to this mindset absolves
Muslims of centuries of sloth and is a complete intellectual surrender to the hegemony of the
West. It pulls at the heartstrings with the innocence of idealism, but the understanding of
the early Islamic history and human nature does not substantiate such simplistic
explanations.

The first observation that we have veered away is true in many ways, but it is not a recent
phenomenon. From very early times Islamic polity started splitting into many sects and sub-
sects. Efforts towards contrived unity often spawned another sub-sect. A more analytical
question is which sects have veered away, and to what extent? Or are all sects guilty in
different ways? Is it really a new phenomenon, and who can judge it objectively? The
answers tend to be inherently self-serving, therefore elusive.

A brief historical survey:

On closer survey of history, it appears that the veering away from the teachings if Islam
started immediately after the death of the Prophet in 632. Many tribes had rebelled. It was
the deft handling of the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, who was elected by a consensus after some
spirited dissentions from the leading companions of the Prophet. The rebellious tribes were
brought back to the fold after strenuous persuasion. The second Caliph, Omar after ten years
of rule was assassinated by a Persian slave. Twelve years later, the third Caliph Uthman was
assassinated because of deepening political machinations and accusations of mismanagement.
The caliphate of the fourth caliph Ali was contested resulting in Islam’s first civil war, with
people dear to the Prophet on the opposite sides. Ali was assassinated by a purist intolerant
group known as “Kharijites”. They accused him of flouting the law of God, because he

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accepted a compromise. In spite of all these dissentions, Islam grew by leaps and bounds and
had spread to Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Persia within twenty years after the Prophet.

In 661, Muawiya the governor of Syria who had contested Ali’s Caliphate became the fifth
Caliph. Arabs had no experience in the governance of an empire. Muawiya learned and
adapted methods from the Byzantines and Persians to consolidate the Islamic Empire
further. In the process, he subverted evolving nascent Islamic democratic norms by
maneuvering the succession of his inept son Yazid to the caliphate, making it a hereditary
office and founded the Umayyad dynasty.

Yazid’s caliphate was challenged by Ali’s second son Husain, resulting in Islam’s second civil
war in twenty-five years. Yazid’s forces mercilessly killed Husain and almost his entire
family to maintain Umayyad grip on power spawning the largest schism in Islam, the Shia-
Sunni divide. Husain’s son Zainul Abideen escaped because he was sick and did not
participate in the war.

In 750, Abul Abbas with Shia support destroyed ninety years of expanding and at times
turbulent Umayyad Caliphate, to establish the Abbasid Dynasty. Abbasids killed almost the
entire ruling Umayyads and soon ditched their Shia supporters, fortifying a trend towards
absolute monarchy, “the shadow of God on earth”. The robust impetus towards
egalitarianism gave way to diluted platitudes. The sole surviving Umayyad founded a rival
dynasty in Spain seceding from the Abbasids in 756.

Reason for the spread of Islam:

So why did Islam spread so fast with all these deficiencies and dissensions among its leaders?
The simple religious answer could be that it was God’s will. But then every thing is
governed by the will of God, so why fret.

One of the most important temporal reasons is that Islam is and was interpreted by the
conquered people to be an egalitarian religion of tolerance and liberation. The defeated
people of Byzantine and Persian empires, and later the people of the Indian subcontinent
were quite used to being oppressed by the rulers, particularly those who belonged to other
sects or casts. In a sudden contrast, they found much more liberty under the Islamic
egalitarian system.

The lives, properties and beliefs of the defeated people were protected and they were allowed
unhindered commerce, bringing prosperity to the ruled and therefore the rulers. Muslims
had to pay Zakat (tax to help the poor) and were enjoined to fight in the defense of the state.
The non-Muslims called Dhimmis in Arabic were neither asked nor were they inclined to
fight for an alien religious state. They were levied Jazia (a protection Tax), which was
regulated and was usually less than the arbitrary, often punitive taxes they paid their former
rulers. Zakat was distributed among the poor, but Jazia was a source of income to the state.

In essence, the new subjects found their lives and future safe and their religious institutions
protected. At first Muawiya even discouraged conversion to Islam, but gradually the rulers

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and the ruled mingled. With the passage of time Christians, Jews, Persians and Hindus even
occupied high positions in the civil administration. For a very long time, a majority of the
people of the Muslim Empire adhered to their ancestral religions. It took centuries for many
to choose to become Muslims, adapting the mores and the religion of the rulers while
maintaining their customs creating cultural syntheses, giving regional flavor to the
composite cultures. After hundreds of years of Muslim rule, the surviving and flourishing
Christian and Jewish communities in the heartlands of Islam and a majority of Indians
remaining in the loosely defined Hindu fold is a testament to the tolerance of the times.

Muslims did find enough reasons to fight against each other for many real and imagined
deviances, fracturing into dozens of sects. The wars were some-times couched in religious
and sectarian terms, but essentially they were for the supremacy of the dynasties supported
by a small coterie in military and civil administration. By mid 10th century with a succession
of weak caliphs, the Abbasid Caliphate had lost most of the temporal power. The Caliph
remained a figurehead in Baghdad. The provinces had become independent Sultanates, ruled
by changing Arab, Persian but mostly Turkic Dynasties, keeping a pretense of Caliph’s
supremacy.

The first half of the Abbasid period saw tremendous flowering in the fields of arts, sciences
and medicine. This blossoming took place because the Muslim scholars liberally borrowed,
learnt and built upon the knowledge from the Hindu, Persian and Byzantine Greek
civilizations.

To streamline the legal systems in the vast empire, Shariah (the Islamic laws) were codified
primarily based on the Quran and practices of the Prophet by the great jurists in the 8th
century. Some authorities on Shariah such as Abu Hanifa (699-765) stressed the value of
interpretation (Ijtehad), others advocated strict adherence to the recorded deeds of the
Prophet. The codified Shariah laws were used to regulate the lives of the population, but
were only loosely observed by the courts and the powerful.

The breakup of the unitary Islamic state liberated the Ulema (scholars and jurists) from
centralized authority of the degenerated Caliphate, ushering a new era of contemporary
interpretation of Islamic laws (Ijtehad) with a wide spectrum from liberal to conservative.
The Sufi movements of personalized mystic spiritualism that were considered to be on the
fringes, even heretic by the orthodoxy of establishment, made considerable inroads in the
mainstream. By the dawn of the 12th century, Al Ghazali (1058-1111) by his powerful
writings brought about a synthesis of Sufism with the orthodox Islam, gaining much wider
acceptance and eventually great popularity.

Sufis, by their humane service oriented practices, became the main evangelists of Islam,
particularly in India, Southeast and Central Asia. They usually shunned association with the
courts and corruption of power, and established many hospices in remote areas.

It is important to note that the marginalization of the caliphate could be considered un-
Islamic, if the practices of the Prophet as in Shariah (the Islamic code of laws) and the first
four Caliphs are used as a standard. But the Islamic jurists subservient to the power of the

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Sultans could not, therefore did not oppose these fissiparous developments and the
consensus based Shariah avoided the subject.

Islamic civilization kept on flourishing in spite of all the vices that accrue to the elite from
the misuse of power, particularly where women and accumulation of wealth were concerned.
The primary reasons were that the populace remained mostly untouched by the dynastic
machinations confined to the elites at the centers of power and because of slow
communications, the hinterlands remained insulated from the upheavals of changes in
regimes. The Sultanates that lost vigor fell, replaced by more vigorous powers, generally
without affecting the rhythm of life of the average person.

Freedom of intellectual pursuits continued to be celebrated by many Sultans. Great centers

of learning had sprung up in Damascus followed by Baghdad, Cordova and Cairo. By the
time these centers declined the central Asian and Indian states took up the slack. The regime
changes occasionally brought intolerant rulers prone to suppression of freedom of thought,
especially when it restricted or challenged the unbridled authority of the ruler in the fields of
Islamic Law. But it was not a death of intellectual freedom, just an inconvenience. Scholars
found ready invitations to newer more welcoming centers of enlightened power. There was
no challenge yet from the West, which was mired in what is now condescendingly called
medievalism, or dark ages.

Decline of Islamic civilization:

Contrary to the popular belief that Islamic civilizations declined because of the rise of the
West, a case can be made that it was partly the decline of the Islamic civilization that gave
impetus to the unchallenged rise of the West. The golden age of Islam, particularly the
scientific pursuits that required greater stability in the Arab heartland, declined by the 12th
century and came to end in 1258 after the brutal Mongol invasion. Though the Mongol
conquers adopted Islam within fifty years, their ruling methods were tribal. With the vast
destruction of manuscripts and libraries, gradually a majority of Ulema (religious jurists and
scholars) came to the view that the Islamic civilization had reached its apogee and all the
interpretations (Ijtehad) needed have been accomplished.

The widespread destruction of Islamic lands, particularly the Baghdad Caliphate at the
hands of Mongols was widely believed to be retribution from God for the deviances. In effect
a consensus emerged that the “gates of Ijtehad, (interpretation) were closed”. Ibn Taymiyyah
(1263-1326) condemned many of the interpretations that accrued after the caliphate of the
first four caliphs, but he advocated fresh interpretation for the current times. He was
imprisoned for such deviance and died heartbroken. By the time of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406),
the Muslim Empire of Spain was in headlong decline and was finally obliterated in 1492.

The advent of the wider use of gun-powder gave impetus to the expansion of the new
Muslim powers especially the Safvids in Iran, Mughals in India and the Ottoman Turks in
Asia Minor, Balkans and North Africa. They had quite liberal and tolerant rulers ushering
an era of conquest, expansion and great civilizations. They reached their zenith in 16th and

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17th centuries. By the beginning of 18th century these great empires were spent and in
decline. The European colonization of the Muslim lands started in mid 18th century.

The great Muslim tradition of scholarship in philosophy and sciences were in decline by the
dawn of the 13th century. About this time the Europeans had started translations of the
knowledge accrued and built upon by the Muslim scholars. Though in the 15th and 16th
centuries Europe was still in religious straight-jacket, it had started a gradual pushing back
against the stranglehold of the unitary Catholic Church. The freedom of thought gradually
gained ground in the 18th century, and has come to be known as the ‘Age of Reason’. With
this came the unleashing of sciences, leading to better technology and the start of colonial
expansion. By the mid 19th century the ‘Industrial Revolution’ had taken hold, particularly
the war technology and exploration leading to world dominance and colonialism. The
colonialism and the ascendance of the West were in part caused by the weakness in Islamic
societies.

Though Islam unequivocally preaches egalitarianism, the powerful elite could not let go of
the trappings of power base in tribes and ethnic dominion of conquerors. Though legally and
ideally the Islamic justice system guarantied equality, the egalitarian ethos of Islam was
greatly damaged. Early on, the conquering Arabs were accorded higher status leading to a
class system. By the time Islam reached India the lower casts converts were shunned in
social intercourse, in effect creating racism. They could have accepted Islam in droves, but
they found that although the egalitarianism was preached, it was practiced with limitations.
After fourteen centuries of Islam, tribalism continues in many Middle-Eastern countries to
this day.

Rise of the West:

Civilizations take generations to rise and recede. Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion
to Christianity in early 4th century was a momentous event in the Christianization of
Europe and shifted the pivot of Christianity to the heart of the Roman Empire. Gradually
the Bishop of Rome became the supreme pontiff of Europe. The Roman power suppressed
the rival Christian churches in the Middle-East, the cradle of Christianity. That was one of
the reasons the Christians readily accepted the domination of Islam in Palestine, Syria and
North Africa.

The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 brought regional ethnic kingdoms to power
vying for Papacy’s support against each other, resulting in centuries of ethnic warfare as
well as unethical exploitation of Christian ethos. The Crusades starting in 1095 were in part
aimed at getting the European powers to direct their energies and blood lust in killing the
Infidel Saracens (Muslims) and restoring the Papal hegemony. After early successes, a two
hundred year span of thirteen successive crusades finally gave up and ended in late 13th
century. In 1453 the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople bringing the Byzantine
Empire to a close, and gradually expanded their empire in the Balkans.

The 15th century saw intellectual awakening in Europe now known as ‘the renaissance’. The
writings of Arab scientists and philosophers were translated in European languages. The

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mass publication of thousands of copies of the Bible by movable metal type setting by
Gutenberg in the 1450s made possible a wider spread of education. The Trans-Atlantic
voyage of Columbus in 1492 resulting in the discovery and start of the colonization of the
Americas followed by Vasco De Gamma’s voyage to East Indies in 1498 opened up a
tremendous naval competition among European powers. This heralded the age of
exploration in the service of the crown and pursuit of riches, acquiring new skills as a
byproduct.

Despite the suppression of Galileo by the Church, Europe was stirring, and by the 16th
century it was in full grip of reformation. Though the Islamic Heartland became a hinterland
to the Ottoman civilization that rose from 15th to mid 18th centuries and Islamic Indian
civilizations that flourished from 13th to early 18th centuries, there was no large-scale
conflict with Christendom, except in the Balkans where the Ottomans reached the gates of
Vienna in 1683. This was an Imperial struggle between the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires
with not much religious overtone. With the rise of Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottomans
retreated to the southern Balkans. The Ottoman Turks acted as the overlords in the empire,
where the punishment for rebellion was harsh, but subject peoples of different religion and
ethnicities were allowed full recognition and autonomy in religion and personal laws as a
community (Millet).

The maritime supremacy and race towards colonization of the Americas took place from the
15th to 19th centuries. The colonization of the Islamic lands, North Africa, India and
Indonesia by Christian Europeans became established in the 18th century and reached its
zenith in the late 19th century.

Religion, personal and public:

No one would disagree with the idea that Muslims should become better Muslims. The
question is who is a better Muslim, and how to become one? The Quran, in its pristine form
is available for all to read, understand and follow. Muslims are inheritors of a rich and
vibrant history. The ebb and flow, strengths and weaknesses need to be analyzed in context
and with candor.

Religion affects people at three intertwined levels that cannot be completely separated. They
are personal, social and political.

On the personal level the mechanics of every day practice of the enjoined tenets of Islam is of
paramount importance. On the spiritual level, religion answers to most in-expressible
sublime yearnings. It gives hope, moorings and a strong sense of morality.

On the social level, it can and should be, but at times is not a force for the good of the
community. Islam is an egalitarian religion of justice, compassion and service. The greatest
evangelists of Islam were the Sufis. They were instrumental in the spread of Islam by
example of devotion, kindness and service to all irrespective of race, color or wealth.
Sectarianism by its very nature adopts exclusivity, and denies others what we demand for
ourselves. Therefore it is contrary to what the Prophet practiced and taught. Muslims, who

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in the pursuit of power used religion for sectarian ends, caused religious wars, injuring the
ethical moorings of the Islamic societies.

The Shariah (Islamic laws) need constant re-evaluation and re-examination commensurate
with the inevitable challenges of changing times, as all forward looking robust civilizations
do, and the great Islamic scholars did.

Religion as a political tool has been used in the quest for power and a customary way for a
people to assert over others. It was historically a zero sum proposition. Some had to lose
power for others to gain. Starting from tribalism the societies evolved to imperialism of
supra tribes. The 18th century saw the post Napoleonic construct of nation states leading to
nationalism and nationalistic imperialism. The concept of tribal or national imperialism is
contrary to Islamic principles, but has been misused time and again.

Religion was easy to use in national conflicts, each side claiming the mandate from God. The
mixture of religion based political supremacy has brought untold suffering throughout the
history and wholesale corruption of religious polity. Early 20th century saw the rise of
irreligious and eventually anti-religious Communism. It brought even more suffering than
the religions could have, proving that the exploitative human nature is the culprit.

The rise of the industrialized West with better communications created a global imbalance
of power, leading to colonialism by the industrialized countries. The societies rebelling
against the yoke of colonialism considered socialism as a short cut to modernity. Without
the infrastructure and constraints of democracy, they deteriorated to draconian
dictatorships. After the disillusionment and suppression by the dictatorships masked as
socialism, the religions have come back to dominate the world political debate at the dawn of
21st century. It is also becoming clearer, even more so than the past, that the religion is
invariably misused in the service of the State. With greater sophistication in propaganda,
politics becomes sectarian in the service of religion and religion in debased in the service of
power hungry politicians.

Institutionalized re-evaluation of Shariah (Islamic Law):

The most important ingredient for the long term success of a civilization is the idea of
justice and faith in the institutions that protect the life and liberty of its citizens.

Narrow sectarian and selfish designing and implementation of rules eventually engender
rebellion. The inclusive systems always fare better. A religious state could aspire to be better
than others, as the medieval Islamic states often were, but in time those treated as the lesser
citizens of a state would aspire to change the system, or defeat it, if they could.

In human affairs there is no perfection. The Quran is a guide towards spiritual salvation and
gives general guidance towards temporal laws. No religious book is a tome on laws. Laws
are derivative from the religious principles.

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None of the laws ever have been perfect in implementation. Better laws are those that are
widely considered to be fair. Some citizens inevitably fall through the cracks, exposing the
inadequacies of the law. In a dynamic system, the grievances lead to the fine-tuning or
amendments in laws. Changes unavoidably incorporate newer flaws to be improved upon in
an unending process.

If all were honest, kind, gentle and ready to give unselfishly, there would not be a need for
laws. Laws are necessary simply because it is not so. History proves that those with power
would eventually almost always misuse it and the greater the mal-distribution of power, the
worse the misuse.

Shariah (Islamic laws) were based on the principles from the Quran augmented by a vast
collection of the Hadeth (the practice and sayings of the prophet) and the inherited customs.
The Shariah laws were codified by many very thoughtful jurists, about two hundred years
after the death of the Prophet. The need for the methodology of evolution of Islamic
Jurisprudence (Fiqh) became more and more apparent to guide the ijtehad (interpretation)
by the time of Imam Shafi in the 8th century. He codified the methodology of development of
laws (Usul-ul-fiqh). These Jurists and scholars were great minds. Their enormous works
were seminal. The methodology and interpretation of laws evolved for another two hundred
years. Gradually between the 11th and 13th century the Islamic spirit of confident
exploration declined, and the idea that the doors of interpretation (ijtehad) are closed, took
hold.

Gradually the dichotomy between the ‘Laws of the State’ (Quanoon) and Shariah (the
personal laws) became entrenched. There was almost no intellectual trafficking among the
two, except for political reasons. State in medieval times was based on military power and
collection of taxes, from the hinterland. The legal system and the judiciary were dominated
by the ruler. The interpretation and practice of Shariah by Muftis (interpreters of laws) was
subservient to the needs of the power. The more thoughtful and courageous Muftis were
weeded out by the powerful in self-interest.

Near universal education and fast communications, in modern times have exposed the
fissures caused by almost five hundred years of relative, and about three hundred years of
complete stagnation. Now except for Saudi Arabia and perhaps Iran no Islamic state even
pretends to follow Shariah, because they do not fit the times. In the stagnating Muslim
states where democracy is either not practiced at all or very imperfectly practiced, the slogan
of bringing the Shariah back is a handy political tool for the politicians. Thus the political
tussle is substituting for the theological and judicial debate to the detriment of the evolution
of Shariah, giving a black eye to both sides of the political divide.

Those with the love of Islam and memories of the grandeur of gone by civilization try to
show the superiority of the Sahriah not by cogent arguments in favor of Shariah but by
castigating the obvious moral-sexual decadence of the West and many other flaws that the
Western secularist civilization has spawned. Those who appreciate the freedom of thought
and exploration that the West in part learnt from Islam and are largely the cause of the
ascendancy of the West, want to have a new system in a hurry without a mechanism of

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carrying the populace with them. The dialogue between the two sides is full of
recriminations, generating much heat but very little light.

Obviously the Western Civilization is not the pinnacle of all that is desired, but it is on an
upward trajectory because it bears and encourages, spirited and even cantankerous debate,
therefore it has developed a slow and tortuous ill-defined self-correcting mechanism.

Islamic polity should not ape the West, but it should regain the spirit of search and research
that made it great long centuries ago. It should rise above the ill-placed fear that intellectual
dissension creates weakness. The simplistic idea that we should unite is appealing, but
without the definition of unity, it remains an impossible dream. Unite for what and how is a
relevant question.

The unity should be for the pursuit of larger goals, such as an appreciation of the dignity of
each human soul, a divine creation as taught by Islam. The unity should not be based on fear
of making mistakes. On the contrary it should be to pursue evolving knowledge with
courage to celebrate freedom and not strangle the freedom to learn, at the altar of false
unity. Better ideas emerge from vigorous, even at times cantankerous debates. The fear of
decadent forces is legitimate, but it pulls too much weight in Muslim countries. Given
human nature, with freedom to think lofty thoughts, the freedom to think baser thoughts
inevitably creeps in. The draconian societies only manage to quell the freedom to excel; the
baser attitudes persist in the shadows, even nurtured because of the suppression of the
freedom to expose them in favor of denial.

Ulema (Muslim religious scholars), barring a few, have failed because the powerful laity
suppressed the original thinkers. Afraid of change people do not demand any better from the
scholars, and do not pay the brighter and courageous minds enough to take up the arduous
task. The discussions about the Shariah and the evolution of personal laws among Muslims
are becoming more open and spirited in many democratic societies. The average Muslim has
started to ask questions in many forums. It is indicative of the stirring of an awakened spirit.
It needs to be nurtured and encouraged.

Islam and Democracy:

Some may say that the Prophets system was perfect. By the Islamic definition, there is not
going to be another Prophet. Muslims consider it very important to follow his example
(Sunnah). Therefore it can not be considered an oversight that the Prophet did not designate
a successor. In effect he willed Muslims to think and choose according to their best lights.

Immediately after his death, a rudderless nascent Islamic community rallied to elect the first
Caliph, with spirited democratic dissentions, followed by three more. They are by consensus
classed as the rightly guided Caliphs. It was a form of an emerging federated representative
democracy. Not a perfect democracy but an initial step towards it. That effort, aborted after
only 28 years, needs to be revived. It is patently Islamic to work towards a more
representative and a better system.

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It took more than a thousand years of hiatus for the self-governing federated democratic
systems to emerge again in 1776 giving birth to the United States of America. It was not a
sudden development. The idea of democratic polity is rooted in many cultures and traditions
since the dawn of civilizations. The idea of a modern democratic state with a constitution
and built in check on unbridled power of the executive by the legislative and judicial
branches took a long time to take shape.

Modern democracies are far from perfect. The idea of checks and balances of power with
time limitation on the person exercising the delegated power provides a self-correcting
mechanism. Those at the helm for a prescribed time may, and have, misused power, but in
time by design they have to relinquish power for the system to recover. All efforts towards a
better system are imbedded with many concomitant inherent flaws. The effort needs to be
directed at being better than what is. With each new step that makes things better, some
associated drawback creeps in, to be improved upon with corrective laws in search of a better
system under the principles of the constitution.

The Challenge of our Times:

The challenge for our times is to emerge out of narrow nationalism to a truly world wide
acceptance of laws based on freedom, equality and justice. The establishment of the United
Nations was and still is a bold and promising effort. It is under siege by the powerful states,
who seek supremacy or the religious zealots who seek hegemony of a religion. The
principles of the UN are largely derived from the wisdom of human experience and are very
close to the principles of Islam.

In medieval times, the states were dominated by religious hegemony of powerful elite. Even
in the best of the circumstances, the religion of the elite held sway. The idea of us and them
was the basis of governance, giving birth to the concept of Darul Islam (the house of peace)
and Darul Harab (the house of war). It was a useful concept because the power was wielded
as an either-or proposition. Very soon the need of Darul Sulah (the house of compromise)
developed, where adjacent religious states treated each others population with dignity. It is
time to nurture and fully develop the idea of Darul Aman (the house of harmony), where
citizens of all countries under the treaty obligations of international law live in peace and
equality and justice as preached by the early Islam before its political success, and it is
imbedded in the modern understanding of the fundamental human rights.

With hardly any exception, the civilizations that allow more freedom tend to do better than
those with less. With freedom comes responsibility to exercise that freedom with care. The
predicament for all societies is how to balance personal freedom and restrictive societal
obligations. With freedom, inevitably vices also increase. The great challenge is to improve
the system in such a way to keep the universally recognized vices down so that the virtues of
freedom would work to the betterment of the society. That is where the moral religious
moorings of Islam can be of great help. This is inevitably a process of trial and error and
takes decades to develop. Those who shun freedom for fear of immorality, manage only to
destroy the growth and excellence that comes with freedom while the vices continue without
being exposed.

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An overwhelming majority of well-known Muslim scholars from the golden age of Islamic
Civilizations were liberal leaning in their interpretations of the Islamic laws and
recommendations in their writings. They believed that Islam is a religion of peace; therefore
justice was of paramount importance. The Quran unequivocally teaches tolerance and
respect for others in all of the verses that are of general nature. Verses for specific occasion
that enjoin Muslims to take up arms are in context of justice and defense. The later are often
quoted without reference to the context, to score contrary points.

The freedom juxtaposes the demands of religion as one interprets it, against the freedom of
others to interpret it slightly or drastically differently. For a civil society to function
effectively, acceptance of restrictive rules and regulations for the common good is necessary.
Yet, with time, many seemingly good laws designed to benefit the status quo prove to be bad
and restrictive, even retrogressive and draconian. Often good laws degenerate into a bad
caricature of the intended purpose. A confident, pluralistic, democratic system regularly
reevaluates and better interprets such laws, not because of external pressures but as an
internal corrective mechanism.

The idea of self-governing democracies as large nation states is rather new and has taken
hold in the last two hundred years. The West colonized and exploited not only the Muslims,
but the whole world for more than three hundred years. The last sixty years have seen
tremendous changes and readjustments in the West as well as other parts of the world. The
Iraq war and the global overreach by the United States is the last gasp of a neo-colonialist
posture.

Unfortunately instead of lifting themselves up, Muslims have been mired in this colonial
stance for more than three centuries. It is time to break free from mental self-imprisonment
and function with courage and conviction to the best what Islam offers. Islam, neither was
nor is in danger, it has been expanding through the bad times in the past and even now. It is
the Muslim power and self image that has been endangered and can be revived with the
recapture the spirit of enquiry, introspection and freedom that Muslims practiced and
Europe adapted to wake up from its ‘dark ages’. Political power over others was not the
quest of Islam, nor should it be for the Muslims. Political power for the betterment of all is
an equitable goal and an Islamic attitude.

Civilizations cannot go back in time to some imagined golden age. Successful systems draw
sustenance from the past, but accept the challenge of the times to adjust and innovate. When
pursuit of knowledge is fettered with the fear of going wrong the civilization declines and
eventually dies. Knowledge should be allowed to flower with confidence in the ability of the
system to absorb it, use it wisely and with care.

Time for a new paradigm:

Muslim societies have felt besieged for a long time. It is easy to take emotional refuge in the
past glories; a backward glance where all sins are washed off in the pool of selective memory
and selective reading of history. This attitude is a feel good survival mechanism for
individuals, but as a community this indulgence is a recipe for a continued downward spiral.

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Unfortunately it is quite common to justify the actions that people condemn in others.
Introspection and self-criticism leads to self reformation and helps to advance boldly with
the cherished principles. Simply reacting to events leaves communities at the mercy of those
pulling the strings

It is time to learn and adapt from the Islamic celebrated past as well as the developments in
other civilizations. The pioneers and the great scholars instrumental for the golden age of
Islam did not shun the ideas and lessons from the great civilizations that preceded them.
They thoughtfully considered new, even seemingly alien ideas from Indian, Persian and
Greek civilizations, not with timidity but with confidence and courage. They debated and
opposed those they did not agree with, in vibrant and as robust a dialogue as possible,
considering the limitations in communications for the age. This is a great legacy worth
emulation.

All new or foreign ideas are not necessarily good or bad. It is important to consider them
thoughtfully; avoiding the pit falls such as the egregious wars and colonialism of the 19th
and 20th centuries. Adoption or rejection without thoughtful evaluation, simply because
they are from the outside, Eastern or Western, is indicative of prejudices, anemic to the
growth of knowledge.

It is time for a civil, thoughtful and fearless debate within the Islamic polity. None of the
Muslim countries have true freedoms to do it. In ‘devoutly proclaimed’ religious countries,
the religion is misused to suppress all freedoms and in ‘devoutly secular’ countries the
religion is suppressed at the altar of secularism. Muslims in democracies have the freedom
and opportunity to take this challenge.

With the passage of time, tribalism gave way to supra tribal empires using religion for
ulterior motives. Personal or tribal empires made way to nation states and nationalistic
hegemonies in the late 18th century. It is time for a new paradigm to aspire and work for - a
complete universal freedom of religion as enshrined in the UN charter and was the demand
of the nascent Islamic polity when others were trying to suppress it. The need to have a
religion based state to avoid the suppression from another religious or anti-religious state is
on the wane because of inherent injustice in such a system. When all religions and ideologies
have a level field without the coercive and corrupting power of the state supporting one over
the other, the best would flourish. All religions and irreligious ideologies claim to be the
best. It is time to strengthen the international institutions of laws and practice what we
preached, but were afraid to practice.

Mirza A. Beg can be contacted at mab64@yahoo.com

Source: http://www.countercurrents.org/beg-250706.htm

Last Accessed: Sunday, December 05, 2010

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