The Holy Quran is desecrated at USA’s Guantanamo military base; human rights abuses take place in Afghanistan and illegally imprisoned Saddam Hussain appears in semi-nude pictures on the pages of the Sun, a notorious and non-serious British tabloid which is widely read by the self-proclaimed serious and civilized Britain. The Muslims protest all over the world. Towns and cities of Afghanistan erupted in spontaneous protests all over the country chanting ‘death to America”. So did Iran while bargaining hard with the Europeans over its uranium enrichment programme. The Muslims of India and Pakistan have also protested, and it seems that protests will continue for some time. In the Arab world people do not protest; yes, their streets seeth with anger as the media reports say. All these against the desecration of the Holy Quran which has not only angered the Muslims the world over but has also exposed the uncivilized face of USA.
As the desecration of the Holy Quran was not enough, the U.S. added salt to injury by violating human rights of the Afghan people. It is not just that the Americans have tortured and killed the Afghan detainees, their insensitive attitude has bruised the Afghan honour all across the country. The Americans, while searching houses degrade the veil-observing Afghan women by forcing them to unveil their faces. When the elders of the Afghan society complain against the high-handed attitude of the US soldiers to the Afghan rulers, they do nothing but express helplessness.
And who will shed tears on the plight of illegally detained Mr. Saddam Husain. The US military surely collaborated with the Sun for publishing Saddam’s picture in order to send a message to the defiant Iraqis. This message is clear and loud. That the Iraqi freedom fighters must behave or else they will be treated like Mr. Saddam Husain.
Curiously the world has not protested to the US either against the desecration of the Holy Quran or against the human rights violation in Afghanistan and Iraq. The reason is simple and obvious. The Muslims do not matter in world affairs or do not carry any weight in the eyes of the world leaders. They are economically weak, educationally backward and militarily important. Well, they have abundance of natural and mineral resources for whose exploitation and good use they depend on the West and others. But the biggest Muslim problem is that their intellectuals as well as so-called Western-educated leaders are mesmerized by the West. Moreover, they have given a clear message to the Western leaders that they are easily purchasable.
Take the example of Afghanistan. Over the years we were fed on the myth that they are uncompromising warriors who would prefer to be killed than to surrender. For over three years the US is mistreating them and controlling even those who fought its dirty war on the ground in order to dislodge the Taliban. It was not the American military power but their dollar that won the day for them yesterday and is helping them even today.
Intellectuals and scholars are supposed to be the conscience-bearer of a people. The misfortune of the Muslim world is that its intellectuals are too westoxicated to lead their people, intellectually or Islamically. On the other hand the ulama are happy in their socially and politically marginalized seminaries, as all is right with the world. They claim to provide guidance to the world without ever trying to know it or how it operates?
Something is surely wrong with the Islamic world. In the 1970s and 1980s there was visible intellectual churning all over which suggested that perhaps the ummah was passing through a phase of creative tension. It was expected that the tension in ideas and thoughts would give birth to a night morning. Unfortunately the agonizing might continues to prolong showing no sign of coming to an end.
All is not lost, however. The basic instinct of survival is alive, and there are people who are not just living on hope, but are also trying to find a way out of the present intellectual and political quagmire. For many centuries the Islamic world, specially the common people have forgotten their special status of having been raised as the balanced ummah. The need of the hour is to move towards attaining the due status which, however, can not be achieved without excelling in the field of education. Unfortunately our educational system suffers from an Islamically untenable duality. This division of education on religious and secular lines is un-Islamic, and the sooner it ends the better for the ummah. Once this duality is ended, the Islamic world will witness the kind of renaissance, intellectual and political, which will give it the status and role that it deserves. Lying on vast mineral resources and being strategically located, the Islamic world must rise to the occasion, and instead of becoming a liability, it should contribute positively to the making of world destiny. We must realize that the West would never give up its imperialist and hegemonic agenda, nor would it ever make our path easy. The only option, then, is to create our own world.
[May, 2005]
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