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In a previous guest column (India Cause, submitted) titled, “Developing democracies in Islamic nations” I summarized a draft constitution document prepared by the Iraq’s interim government and submitted for voter approval at a referendum to be held on October 10, 2005. The article discussed the potential detrimental consequences of incorporating Shariah brand legal and justice system into Iraq’s constitution and compared it to what is happening in the military democracy of Pakistan, which is a constitutional democracy in name as its constitution has been suspended by each dictator who managed to grab power by unconstitutional means. The article showed limitations in establishing or developing a successful Islamic democracy if Muslims do not adopt rational changes to Islam’s articles of faith.

The present article is concerned with developments in Pakistan and it describes how Asharite (Muslim) Arab practices impede rational changes to Islam’s article of faith needed for developing an Islamic constitutional that grants certain “self evident” rights and a measure of self-worth to all its citizens, promotes education incorporating philosophy, sciences and mathematics and finally, following in the footstep of Turkey what Pakistan should do to become a moderate society.

The perception of “Allah, America and the Army” is the key to political power in Pakistan. Pakistanis rulers, mostly dictators like Musharraf, are opportunistic and they have created an image of Pakistan suffering from an identity crisis by trying to negate Hindu dominated Indian identity and dreams of acquiring an Arab identity. Using religion and the two-nation theory, soon after its creation those who helped create it lost its control to those (think of Mullahs and the Army) who were initially opposed to the creation of Pakistan. Although many Pakistanis brag about Arab heritage it is now increasingly being recognized that most Pakistanis are of Indian decent. Pakistani rulers should seriously examine what would happen to Pakistan if they continue to blindly follow Arabs as they have done so for past 58 years?

Civilisations come and go, empires rise and fall, and currently we may be seeing the decline and fall not of Islam -- which as a religion appears to be in good health the world over -- but of the Arabs, most of who just happen to be Muslims. The "Clash of Civilisations" predicted by Huntington in his book of the same name published in 1996 is not a possibility as Islam and specifically the twenty-two Arab nations present no significant military threat to the West. Even assuming the Arabs could put aside their differences and assembled a unified fighting force it would never punch much above lightweight. They have a collective GDP a little less than that of Spain and the combined (purely conventional, let`s not forget) military power of the Arabs isn`t going to give the war-planners of the Pentagon sleepless nights. Outside the Arab world, other Muslim states present no threat either. The real threat that exists for all of us is the potential collapse of the Arab world, a world kept afloat by a sea of oil.

The website of the Arab League has a paper detailing the contributions made by the Arabs to civilization; it identifies the year 1406 being the most recent date at which a significant contribution was made and thereafter stagnation and decline from the end of the Ottoman Empire followed with only oil money holding back collapse.

Statistics from the U.N.`s Arab Human Development Report give us more telling insights. There are 18 computers per thousand Arab citizens compared to a global average of 78.3. Only 1.6% of the population has Internet access. Average Research and Development expenditures are less than one-sixth of Cuba`s and one fifteenth of Japan`s. There are 60 million illiterate adults, mostly women, and a declining educational system, its quality being eroded by the inroads made by religion at all levels. Take out the income from the export of oil and the entire region exports less than that for Finland. Rapid population growth is reducing living standards across the region, as evidenced by the fact that per-capita GDP is currently $1,500, down from $2,300 in the late 1970`s. Arab populations are expected to grow from 280 million to almost 460 million by 2020; and over 600 million a generation later. Many Arab governments are already failing to meet basic human needs, and it is difficult to see how they are going to cope with such a population increase. There is a potential for collapse in the Arab world that would be bad news for all of us. Think oil. Think regional instability and war. Islam is not the root of the collapse but instead a fundamental failure of Arab culture that is causing them to look backwards to the Golden Age of their civilization.

The data show that internal decay may destroy Arabs. Given the data and failing to get a substantial financial aid from nations like Saudi Arabia why would any sane Pakistani want to emulate Arabs? Some indicators for Pakistan such as the "youth bulge" and the rise of religious extremism are uncomfortably close to that for Arabs but as a South Asian nation it also has potential for exploiting its vast natural (other than oil) and human resources, so look and learn Pakistan.

The history of Arabs (Dr. Anwar Syed, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, US) shows why rational explanations are not a part of Arab Islamic interpretations and why thinking in philosophy, mathematics, and science ceased in the Arab Muslim world starting with thirteenth century.

• The basic issue is whether propositions in the realm of beliefs are subject to rational examination? The “Mutazilites” Arabs sought to find rational explanations for articles of faith. They were influential for less than a century (748-827AD) and then they were suppressed until they disappeared from Muslim theological discourse. Arab Muslims have their share of obscurantism.

• The winners in this contest, known as Asharites Arabs, opposed the application of reason to matters of religion. They preached conformity to the teachings of the earlier interpreters, and they cultivated prejudice against philosophy and non-religious branches of knowledge. In 1150 Caliph Mustanijid ordered the burning of the philosophical works of Ibn Sina (Avicena) and in 1194 Amir Abu Yusuf al-Mansur, then at Seville (Spain), ordered the burning of the works of another great Muslim philosopher, Ibn Rushd (Averros). Thereafter, further thinking in philosophy, mathematics, and science ceased in the Arab Muslim world.

• The Arab ulema opposed the products of modern technology. The printing press did not appear in any Muslim country until 1798 when Napoleon came to Egypt (some 350 years after the first printing of the Bible). It came to Turkey in 1839 but was limited to the production of non-religious books. The Qur’an was not printed in a Muslim country until 1874. The ulema do not oppose modern science and technology any longer, but they still oppose the attitude of mind (disposition to questioning and free inquiry) that made advances in these areas possible.

• Fundamentalism and extremism pose a clear and present threat to the peace and good order of the republic; indeed, a threat to its very existence. Obscurantism may produce the same result through a different procedure. It works like a slow-acting cancer that is killing the Muslim people’s spirit of enterprise, capacity to be innovative, and creativity. Thus it makes them retrogressive and incompetent and vulnerable to external forces that intend to control and subjugate them.

In thirteenth century Arab culture was considerably influenced by Mongols who conquered most Arab lands. Mongols upon conversion to Islam also promoted conformity to teachings of the earlier interpretations. Dr. Fouad Ajami, (professor of International Relations at John Hopkins University) described what happened when Baghdad, the great city of learning and capital of Abbasid Caliphate had fallen to savage Mongols in 1258. An age of greatness had drawn to close when Mongols sacked the Baghdad metropolis, put its people to the sword, and dumped the books of its libraries in the Tigris, which flowed alternately with the blood of the victims and the ink of the books.

For Indian readers of this article the significance of such historical narrations would become very personal when examined under Indian context. The historical events of Arab and Mongols are very similar to what barbarian Turkish slave Ghazni ((from 1000 - 1030) and Ghori (1175 - 1206) did on Indian subcontinent. Ghazni destroyed Somnath and other important metropolis centers of Western India; see A Millennium of Jihad and Dhimmitude on the Indian Subcontinent by Andrew Bostom, (Associate Professor of Medicine, and the author of the forthcoming The Legacy of Jihad http://www.andrewbostom.org/, on Prometheus Books (2005).)

K.S. Lal (The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India, New Delhi, Aditya Prakashan, 1992, pp. 96-97) described the barbarian forces of Ghaznis ravaging parts of India during a 23 year period between 1000 and 1023:

In his first attack of frontier towns in 1000 Mahmud appointed his own governors and converted some inhabitants. In his attack on Waihind (Peshawar) in 1001-3, Mahmud is reported to have captured the Hindu Shahiya King Jayapal and fifteen of his principal chiefs and relations some of whom like Sukhpal were made Musalmans. At Bhera all the inhabitants, except those who embraced Islam, were put to the sword. At Multan too conversions took place in large numbers, for writing about the campaign against Nawasa Shah (converted Sukhpal).

Utbi, Mahmud’s court historian, viewed these expeditions to India as a jihad to propagate Islam and extirpate idolatry (Srivastava. The Sultanate of Delhi, p. 52).

Utbi says that this and the previous victory (at Multan) were “witnesses to his exalted state of proselytism.” In his campaign in the Kashmir Valley (1015) Mahmud “converted many infidels to Muhammadanism, and having spread Islam in that country returned to Ghazni.” In the later campaign in Mathura, Baran and Kanauj, again, many conversions took place. While describing “the conquest of Kanauj,” Utbi sums up the situation thus: “The Sultan leveled to the ground every fort… and the inhabitants of them either accepted Islam, or took up arms against him.” In short, those who submitted were also converted to Islam. In Baran (Bulandshahr) alone 10,000 persons were converted including the Raja. During his fourteenth invasion in 1023 Kirat, Nur, Lohkot and Lahore were attacked. The chief of Kirat accepted Islam, and many people followed his example.

These continuous jihad campaigns were accompanied by great destruction and acts of wanton cruelty in India. Vincent Smith (The Oxford History of India, Oxford, 1928, p. 221) has described the devastating impact of the late 12th century jihad razzias against the Buddhist communities of northern India, centered on Bihar, based on Muslim sources, exclusively:

The Muhammadan historian, indifferent to distinctions among idolators, states that the majority of the inhabitants were “clean shaven Brahmans”, who were all put to the sword. He evidently means Buddhist monks, as he was informed that the whole city and fortress were considered to be a college, which the name Bihar signifies. A great library was scattered. When the victors desired to know what the books might be no man capable of explaining their contents had been left alive. No doubt everything was burnt. …… Many noble monuments of the ancient civilization of India were irretrievably wrecked in the course of the early Muhammadan invasions. Those invasions were fatal to the existence of Buddhism as an organized religion in northern India, where its strength resided chiefly in Bihar and certain adjoining territories. The monks who escaped massacre fled, and were scattered over Nepal, Tibet, and the south. After A.D. 1200 the traces of Buddhism in upper India are faint and obscure.

Before we examine what Pakistan should do to become a moderate state let’s examine some recent political events to get an understanding of social and political fabric of Pakistan. In a recent confrontation with Pakistani women’s group in New York, Musharraf is said to have adopted a confrontational arrogant stance against human right’s activists such as HRCP (Human Right’s Commission of Pakistan). He bragged that he was a soldier and would fight them to end to create a “softer” image of Pakistan in West. A series of articles on Musharraf’s behavior at New York have appeared in South Asia Times, e.g., Can Anyone See the General`s Missing Clothes by Dr. Maqbool Halepota, Sept. 29 and for a week preceding it (http://www.satribune.com/index.jsp).

If I were present at the confrontation I would have reminded Musharraf that being a dictator he is likely to follow in footsteps of his predecessors and he may also contribute to another disintegration of the nation such as one in 1971, which was precipitated by a refusal to acknowledge and grant “self evident” human rights to Bengalis of East Pakistan. I would have added that with use of Shariah legal and justice system in parallel courts managed by self-appointed clerics and Qazis is keeping a vast majority of women of Pakistan subjugated and in conditions of family bondage; effectively, his government is instrumental in denying Pakistani women a measure of self-worth and access to modern education for acquiring marketable skills globally in demand. The madrassah brand education is counterproductive to the spirit of enterprise, capacity to be innovative, and creativity; consequently, more than 50 percent of Pakistan’s human resources remain underdeveloped and economically Pakistan continues to be a basket case.

What would it take to establish a Muslim renaissance to `battle for the hearts and minds` of Muslims? Turkey`s Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), in his time, revolutionized his country and pulled it up, root and branch, from medieval concepts of Islam, to a `modern`, westernized State. Kemal Ataturk stopped at nothing: he sought to change the Turk`s outlook totally in terms of script, dress, deportment, and education - the whole works. In 1933 Kemal Pasha even went to the extent of reorganizing the Istanbul University, inviting scholars from Germany to take up teaching posts. In effect, reforming Islam would require changes in the form and substance of the parallel society that (Arabized) Islam advocates in addition to developing a healthy respect for people of non-Islamic faiths and their established local social, cultural, economic and political norms.

It would mean cosmetic changes such as banish the burkha as well as reforming the Islamic Shariah brand discriminatory law and justice system to acknowledge “self evident” human rights and a measure of self-worth for all citizens, in addition to preparing a society and culture that challenges mullahs dominating madarassahs and the fundamentalists with their zest for jihad.

A `renaissance` means bringing about a fundamental change in one`s religious outlook. Pakistani Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) including HRCP should continue providing over one million students with free boarding and lodging without involving them in spreading hatred and militancy. They need to make changes in the seminary curriculum to shift focus from rituals to the real value of religion and banish the obscurantist who have been using mosques for spreading extremism. Pakistani ruling elites and army should shift emphasis from political ambitions to internal reforms.

Gimmicks are seldom a substitute for substantive actions at home as well as abroad and Pakistani rulers, clerics, the Army and elite need to understand and effectively implement policies that will make them stand out like Turkey to be a moderate Islamic State. If politically Pakistan continues to progress as it has in the last six years under dictator Musharraf then chances for Pakistanis led by clerics and the Army promoting rational explanations for the articles of faith appear to be rather slim.

Kishan Bhatia

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