|
OIC MUST EXPLAIN 'DEVIANT IDEOLOGY'
By BALBIR K PUNJ
The recent Mecca summit of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC), where leaders of 57 Muslim countries converged, resolved to fight against 'deviant ideas'. By 'deviant ideas' they did not mean Leftist, secular or Western ideas, as it might appear from an Islamic point of view, but rather terrorism. Terrorism, OIC recognised, imperils not only contemporary Islamic society but also its future and the future of humanity at large. One important recommendation of OIC towards eliminating terrorism was to call for new school curricula to purge extremist ideas.
But what are those 'extremist ideas' that need to be purged? Are these 'extremist ideas' borrowed from certain sources outside the standard Islamic courseware? Or do they come from within the pall of its basic texts -- the Koran, the Hadith? Those who indulge in acts of terrorism, including suicide bombing, are no religious scholars with decades of grounding in Fiqa (Islamic jurisprudence), Hidaya, or in Islamic calligraphy. Many of them, recently converted from non-Islamic background, blow themselves up as suicide bombers before they learn Arabic. It will be evident that seeds of terrorism are to be found within the fundamentals of Islamic curriculum rather than its lengthy interpretations and commentaries.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal first raised the issue of 'deviant ideology' on the eve of the Mecca summit. However, Saudi Arabia's own credentials expose its doublespeak. The ruling dynasty of the Kingdom, the House of Sauds, is guided by Wahabi ulema. In 1961, it founded the Islamic University of Medina, as an alternative to Egypt's Al Azhar University, the apex body of Islamic academia. Coincidentally in the same year, Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser extended government control on curriculum in Al Azhar. His crackdown on Islamic Brotherhood had driven many of its members to Saudi Arabia. They played a vital role in activation of the Islamic University of Medina. Pakistani radical Islamist Maulana Abu al-Ala Mawdudi was one of the trustees of the university.
The university was even kept outside the control of Saudi Ministry of Education but controlled by grand mufti Sheikh Mohammed ibn Ibrahim Al al-Sheikh. Students from the entire Muslim world attended its classes and were exposed to the ideas of Wahabbism and Muslim Brotherhood. Some years later non-Saudis formed 85 percent of the student body. Those foreign students returned home to disseminate ideas professed in Medina's University. In 1967, King Abdul Aziz University was established and also taught foreign students Wahabi ideology. Those twin universities became the hothouses for the growth of Islamic ideology.
So to which 'deviant ideology' was the OIC summit referring? Whether it is 'deviant' or 'non-deviant' is certainly another debate but Saudis were fortifying the intellectual infrastructure of terrorism rather than curbing it. They were, by no stretch of imagination, promoting moderation or toleration.
It must be remembered that one of the grounds that Muslims claim for the validity of Islam is its incorruptibility over ages. It means not a comma or full stop can be relocated, added or deleted in Islamic texts. Any deviation would tantamount to condemnable heresy. Secularism as practiced in India had ensured that these inconvenient aspects of Islam are never discussed. Any attempt to critically analyse Islamic theology is immediately termed as 'communalism'.
Moreover, Muslims are bound by the Prophet's Sunna, which means Muslims should try to replicate what the Prophet did or said. Thus Maulana Hussain Ahmed Madani (1879-1957), who served as president of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind for 17 years and opposed Jinnah's two-nation theory, spoke of 'composite nationalism' among Hindu and Muslims against British rule on the lines of Prophet Mohammed with his followers from Quraish and Ansar tribes forming an alliance with the Jews of Medina. Madani in that entire speech of 1938 (now published as booklet 'Composite Nationalism and Islam' by Manohar Publishers) proves his mind is fully in Arabia although he was born and died in Uttar Pradesh. However, he stopped short of saying whether after a fight with the British the 'enemy of Islam' was over.
Today, the OIC says terrorism is a deviant ideology, and casts an ominous shadow on Muslim society and humanity at large. But is it only because Muslim leadership understands it as accountable to humanity? Or is it because the world armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombs, and mastery of sea and skies could reach Muslim countries if necessary? This equation of Islamic inferiority vis-a-vis the West began during the colonial era. And, it was during the colonial era that ideas of secularism, co-existence, and tolerance began to be introduced in world discourse. Today it is not possible for the Islamic world to avoid accountability to the rest of humanity.
But when the Muslim army from Arabia registered conquests over flourishing civilisations of the Middle East, Persia and India it had no accountability except to Islam. Massacres by Mahmud Ghaznavi, Taimur Lang, or Ahmed Shah Abdali are not acts of terrorism according to Islamic standards. They were rather implementation of the Prophet's Sunna and Koran's teachings against non-Muslims.
|
|
INNER STORY
