Muslim Pride after the Fall

The greatest causality in our contest with ‘the West’ is our self respect. Of all the wounds inflicted upon us, the blow to our dignity is the most painful. The success and might of the West forces us to adopt a posture of defiance that is against our self-interests and wellbeing. Rather than looking deep into our souls, we take pride in feeling our non-existent biceps. If the West does one thing, we must do the opposite. If she professes democracy, we have to create an ‘indigenous’ model which is superior to it. If she possesses great
science, art and culture, our honour demands that we create greater alternatives. We no longer live for ourselves but for our image. We move by recoils and that too in circles!

Our age possesses no will for self-criticism and reform. We show no courage to look at ourselves as we really are. In place of cherishing the living, we venerate corpses. Fleeing our present, we turn to the past not for reflection and review but for comfort and solace. Our dialogue with history is nothing but a deceptive game of self - indulgence .  Self - aggrandizement not self-appraisal is our pastime. Our faith may not be an opiate, but we certainly are the most past-intoxicated people in the world.

Inhabiting all the continents of the world, we still behave as if we were aliens from a distant planet. Without the scourge of Nazism, e have ghettoized ourselves. In the absence of anyone demanding our imprisonment, we are busy building fences around us. Humanity at large is not our kindred tribe but our blood-enemy. In our determination to be ourselves, we have turned ourselves into the pariahs of the world.

Even our moral sensitivity, the most precious gift of our faith and our window to the rest of mankind, has been made an instrument of isolation and retreat. In order to defend an ‘Islam’ that we do not practise, we indict everyone else for cherishing what they believe in. Our pretence convinces us that in the Bathhouse of Nations, we alone possess the towel of morality.

We are holier than everyone else. Our past is spotless; our scholars have solved all the riddles of the world; our soldiers have won all the battles, and our ancestors have done everything that needs to be done. Without addressing any questions to ourselves, we are ever ready to supply answers to everybody else. We have lost power, dignity, respect and righteousness, but our pride clings to us even after the fall.

Nothing spells the doom of our civilization as the moral cancer of sanctimony and mendacity. Self-delusion may be a sedative but it is a lethal drug all the same. The defeat of our armies, the collapse of our institutions, the perfidy of our rulers, the bigotry of our divines are not half as fatal for our survival as is our love for self-deception. Unless we start practising what we preach, our endangered species would soon become extinct.

No one who claims to be a Muslim thinker may avoid asking these questions in the open any more. Reticence and circumlocution have by now run their course. No longer can we ignore the gaping void separating our lofty ideals and our abysmal deeds. No pretence can convince us, not to mention the world around us, that our divines possess all the wisdom, that our women enjoy all the rights, that our rulers exercise all the justice, that our soldiers display all the valour, that our masses possess all the morality. Our pitiful lies do not even convince us any more.

Why is it that to look for injustice within the House of Islam is to invite all the furies of the established guardians of faith? Why is it that the forces of repression, retrogression and reaction have no difficulty in mustering ‘Islam’ to their help, only the seekers of freedom, equality and justice have to prove their Islamic credentials at every turn? How come we loathe warfare while killing own brethren is the glory of our patriotism? How dare we scorn nationalism when we ourselves gloat in sectarian pride? What justification is there for blaming others when we ourselves are our worst enemies?

Our ills are our own, nobody else’s.  That we accept tyranny and oppression is our suffering. That our children die of hunger is our responsibility. That our women die of childbearing and domestic violence is our disgrace. That our scholars prosper by ignorance is our shame. That our rulers rule by terror is our scourge. That our civilization is crumbling is our doing. By our sanctimony we fool no one but ourselves. We alone are the victims of our hypocrisy and we alone can rid ourselves of it. The sooner this curse comes to an end, the better it is for us and the world for whom we have become a liability and a burden.

In earlier issues, our contributors examined the nature of the Neo-Salafi ideology and its consequences for the Muslim societies. They came to the conclusion that its militant politics, informed by a rigid theology and distinguished by a rabidly antiintellectual disposition, terminates in the heartless land of fanaticism and terror. It represents a betrayal of our tradition, a debasement of out morality, indeed a disfigurement of our humanity.

In this issue, these insights have been extended to the realm of culture. The neo- Salafi politics of purity, it is further demonstrated by our authors, is scornful of all human achievements. It is as destructive of the artistic heritage of the past, as it is inimical to the cultural life of the present. In seeking a moment of authenticity in a mythical past, it rejects all history and tradition.  By so doing, it acts as an agent of sedition and disharmony We on our part seek to demonstrate that our civilization is heir to a rich artistic tradition in which spirituality triumphs over puritanical emptiness and in which beauty is regarded as a means to approaching God, at par with prayer! Similarly, our faith demands an ethical revolution in the soul and prescribes righteousness as the measure of man. This we believe is the ultimate antidote against all the poisonous ideologies of self-worship.