Seif
06-08-05, 10:12
Islam: the tide of change
The Muslim world is not the medieval monolith we in the west often imagine. Ziauddin Sardar toured some of its most populous and important countries, meeting senior leaders and thinkers, and he returned hopeful
May Allah forgive the BBC. The particular enormity? A decision to send me, in the BBC's words, "on an epic journey through the Muslim world". My mission: to talk to heads of government, intellectuals and opinion leaders and discover what has changed, what is changing and what could change.
We in the west suffer from a sort of tunnel vision about the Muslim world. For a start, we often speak and think of it as primarily Arab, where in fact only one Muslim in six is an Arab. We also tend to see it as static and rigid - it can appear, if there is any movement going on, that it is all in one direction, towards extremism and fundamentalism. This, too, is a false picture.
My voyages for the BBC took me to Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco and Turkey, an itinerary that included some of the most populous and important Muslim nations. Everywhere I went I found courageous progressives engaged in a battle of ideas with conservatives. Each country had a different Islam, a different dynamic and a different way of addressing the issue of change, but that change is taking place is beyond dispute. And yet all this is largely invisible to us in the west.
Take Pakistan, where the 7 July bombers allegedly acquired their conservative ideological stiffening. It has been identified as a hotbed of militancy, a global centre for anti-progressive indoctrination. That militancy is a creation of the west, encouraged by the United States and Britain during the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Now that those fighters have turned on Pakistan as well as the west, the burden of containing them falls on President Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler who likewise came to power with the tacit approval of the US and Britain. Can he deliver what we expect him to deliver?
We met at the Army House in Rawalpindi, abode of all military dictators of Pakistan. Before the interview the BBC crew and I were searched, our mobile phones were confiscated, our filming equipment was scrutinised. Eventually we were taken to the Sun Room, a large conservatory where we found samurai swords, state-of the-art music and cinema equipment and fine Havana cigars. "This is where the president comes to relax," we were told.
General Sultan, chief press officer to the president, arrived to instruct us how we should film, and moments later another crew arrived. "They are going to film you filming the president," we were told, "for our own record." Other aides drifted in, and by the time General Musharraf sat down to talk the room was so crowded we could hardly move.
The extremists are being fought with "enlightened moderation", he declared. "It's a two-pronged strategy." Pakistan had to reject extremism and terrorism and opt for religious moderation and socio-economic development. The west, particularly America, has to change its foreign policy. Musharraf is genuinely concerned about the extremist threat - "If this country goes on the path to extremism, Pakistan's future will be very dark," he said - but I think his power to change his country is more limited than many in the west imagine.
Those words "enlightened moderation" are a carefully chosen weapon Musharraf is using against the Islamic parties, which are widely seen these days as groups of ignorant fanatics. His main foe on that front is Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of Jamaat-e-Islami and head of the coalition of right-wing religious parties. I met him, too, in rather different circumstances. At his bungalow in Islamabad the only security was a solitary bodyguard, yet the deputy leader of his party had just been murdered and his own car had been firebombed the previous day. It is not clear who was responsible. He looked shaken but spoke with defiance. "Pakistan was founded on Islamic ideology," he said. "We want the sharia as the foundation of this country." Qazi finds nothing unjust in the sharia law, which has had official authority in Pakistan for 25 years. "It is all about protecting human dignity," he told me.
Clinging blindly to ideas that are losing credibility all around him, Qazi cut a sad, beleaguered figure. If he is anything to go by, the Islamic parties have no future, for most people I spoke to in Pakistan told a very different story, and one of which we hear little in the west. They repeatedly expressed open resentment, both towards the military and the Islamic parties, and a great deal of their anger is focused on the sharia law, which they see as unjust and oppressive. Not only are they rejecting the sharia but they are also questioning the central ideology of Pakistan - the ideology used to legitimise military rule. The very things the conservatives want to ban - music, art, fashion - are being employed by these people to create a modern, confident Pakistan. And, much to the horror of the conservatives, women are in the driving seat.
If Pakistan poses a threat to the rest of the world it does not come from these people, or from Qazi and his conservatives. It lies elsewhere, and the west just cannot see it. The most obnoxious religious zealots in the country wear the uniform of the military, and what happened after my interview with Musharraf was a perfect illustration of the army's mentality. General Sultan, who had been sitting behind the president taking notes throughout, called us over and proceeded to review the interview line by line. "Can you cut this sentence out?" he asked. "And that sentence; and this word in the sentence after that?" The producer and I looked at each other in amazement.
The army has the habit of controlling everything. The richest, most politically active and most zealot-ridden institution in Pakistan, it helped create the Taliban and the jihadi madrasas, and it propped up the religious opposition. It was the former military ruler, General Zia ul-Haq, who enshrined the sharia in law. Those who think Pakistan's military rulers will rescue them from extremism are barking up the wrong tree.
What is most surprising to a visitor from the west is that, despite the military, an alternative, progressive interpretation of Islam is gaining strength. This is the force that can lead Pakistan out of its darkness; these are the people - not Musharraf and his supporters - who need our backing in the fight against extremism.
While Pakistan still struggles with its military rulers, Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has emerged from a long military dictatorship. Here, the impact of democracy is evident. In Jakarta I met Ulil Abshar Abdalla, founder of the Liberal Islam Network (JIL). In his mid-thirties, Ulil was educated at local seminaries and is a highly qualified religious scholar. What is needed, he says, is "freedom to think, to question". Indonesia has a great tradition of intellectual debate and political dissent, and democracy has given that tradition its head.
The outcome is a radically transformed relationship between Islam and the state. Conventionally, Muslims have shaped the debate in terms of the "Islamic state" - that is, a state ruled by Islam with sharia as the state law. The progressive and liberal groups in Indonesia now seek to redirect political Islam towards shaping a civic society. And in the words of Abdul Mukti, the youth leader of Muhammadiyah, an organisation with more than 40 million followers: "It is time to rethink Islam without the sharia."
I have not seen that kind of boldness anywhere else, and yet it comes from within Muslim history: it represents a revival of the rationalist tradition of Islam. Liberal scholars and thinkers are using a rational, as opposed to literal, interpretation of Islamic texts. They view religious faith as a relative concept and believe in the separation of religion and state. This approach is the talk of the town in Jakarta. We even filmed the broadcast of the country's first mainstream television programme devoted to exploring rationalist and pluralistic interpretations of Islam. This is not the medieval Islam of western caricature, but something open and dynamic.
I believe the changes ushered in by democratic liberal thought in Indonesia are irreversible. Conservative forces are in retreat, even if they are not going quietly. Several fatwas have been issued against Ulil. "Are you worried?" I asked. He laughed. "I think a lot of people are upset at what we have to say, but many other people are happy." In July the conservative religious scholars of the Indonesian Ulama Council issued another fatwa. Liberalism, secularism and pluralism "contradict Islamic teachings", it said, while the JIL and Muhammadiyah Youth Intellectuals Network were "deviant". The last hurrah of a dying tradition.
While Indonesia is being transformed from the grass roots, its neighbour Malaysia is being changed from the top. For a quarter of a century it was ruled by the fiercely independent and authoritarian Mahathir Mohamad, who shaped it as a developed and wealthy country, a shoppers' paradise. In 2003, Mahathir's mantle passed to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who took over as prime minister. He is a man with ideas about the future of Islam.
I interviewed him in Putrajaya, the new administrative centre, which looks like a 1950s Hollywood set for an Arabian Nights epic. Apart from a lonely guard at the gate of his residence, there was no security. Badawi struck me as deeply religious and passionate. "My idea of progressive Islam," he insisted, "is nothing new." The prime minister calls his interpretation "Islam Hadhari", deliberately using the classic Islamic term for urban culture and civilisation. He wants the Muslims of Malaysia to focus on cultural and economic development and embrace modernity wholeheartedly. "There is nothing in Islam that is against modernity or against progress," he says. The emphasis on urban culture is deliberate - the conservative Islam of the Islamic party Pas is largely confined to rural areas. So by focusing on urban development and urban civic culture, Badawi is pitting his interpretation against conventional, traditionalist notions of Islam. Moreover, while the traditionalists emphasise the past, Islam Hadhari emphasises the present and the future. While the conservatives focus on piety, Islam Hadhari focuses on practicality.
Malaysia is a deeply conformist society. Unlike Indo-nesia, it does not have a strong intellectual tradition. Everything revolves around the personality and authority of the prime minister. If Badawi tells his citizens to be tolerant and modern, the likelihood is that they will be tolerant and modern.
The Muslim world is not the medieval monolith we in the west often imagine. Ziauddin Sardar toured some of its most populous and important countries, meeting senior leaders and thinkers, and he returned hopeful
May Allah forgive the BBC. The particular enormity? A decision to send me, in the BBC's words, "on an epic journey through the Muslim world". My mission: to talk to heads of government, intellectuals and opinion leaders and discover what has changed, what is changing and what could change.
We in the west suffer from a sort of tunnel vision about the Muslim world. For a start, we often speak and think of it as primarily Arab, where in fact only one Muslim in six is an Arab. We also tend to see it as static and rigid - it can appear, if there is any movement going on, that it is all in one direction, towards extremism and fundamentalism. This, too, is a false picture.
My voyages for the BBC took me to Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco and Turkey, an itinerary that included some of the most populous and important Muslim nations. Everywhere I went I found courageous progressives engaged in a battle of ideas with conservatives. Each country had a different Islam, a different dynamic and a different way of addressing the issue of change, but that change is taking place is beyond dispute. And yet all this is largely invisible to us in the west.
Take Pakistan, where the 7 July bombers allegedly acquired their conservative ideological stiffening. It has been identified as a hotbed of militancy, a global centre for anti-progressive indoctrination. That militancy is a creation of the west, encouraged by the United States and Britain during the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Now that those fighters have turned on Pakistan as well as the west, the burden of containing them falls on President Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler who likewise came to power with the tacit approval of the US and Britain. Can he deliver what we expect him to deliver?
We met at the Army House in Rawalpindi, abode of all military dictators of Pakistan. Before the interview the BBC crew and I were searched, our mobile phones were confiscated, our filming equipment was scrutinised. Eventually we were taken to the Sun Room, a large conservatory where we found samurai swords, state-of the-art music and cinema equipment and fine Havana cigars. "This is where the president comes to relax," we were told.
General Sultan, chief press officer to the president, arrived to instruct us how we should film, and moments later another crew arrived. "They are going to film you filming the president," we were told, "for our own record." Other aides drifted in, and by the time General Musharraf sat down to talk the room was so crowded we could hardly move.
The extremists are being fought with "enlightened moderation", he declared. "It's a two-pronged strategy." Pakistan had to reject extremism and terrorism and opt for religious moderation and socio-economic development. The west, particularly America, has to change its foreign policy. Musharraf is genuinely concerned about the extremist threat - "If this country goes on the path to extremism, Pakistan's future will be very dark," he said - but I think his power to change his country is more limited than many in the west imagine.
Those words "enlightened moderation" are a carefully chosen weapon Musharraf is using against the Islamic parties, which are widely seen these days as groups of ignorant fanatics. His main foe on that front is Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of Jamaat-e-Islami and head of the coalition of right-wing religious parties. I met him, too, in rather different circumstances. At his bungalow in Islamabad the only security was a solitary bodyguard, yet the deputy leader of his party had just been murdered and his own car had been firebombed the previous day. It is not clear who was responsible. He looked shaken but spoke with defiance. "Pakistan was founded on Islamic ideology," he said. "We want the sharia as the foundation of this country." Qazi finds nothing unjust in the sharia law, which has had official authority in Pakistan for 25 years. "It is all about protecting human dignity," he told me.
Clinging blindly to ideas that are losing credibility all around him, Qazi cut a sad, beleaguered figure. If he is anything to go by, the Islamic parties have no future, for most people I spoke to in Pakistan told a very different story, and one of which we hear little in the west. They repeatedly expressed open resentment, both towards the military and the Islamic parties, and a great deal of their anger is focused on the sharia law, which they see as unjust and oppressive. Not only are they rejecting the sharia but they are also questioning the central ideology of Pakistan - the ideology used to legitimise military rule. The very things the conservatives want to ban - music, art, fashion - are being employed by these people to create a modern, confident Pakistan. And, much to the horror of the conservatives, women are in the driving seat.
If Pakistan poses a threat to the rest of the world it does not come from these people, or from Qazi and his conservatives. It lies elsewhere, and the west just cannot see it. The most obnoxious religious zealots in the country wear the uniform of the military, and what happened after my interview with Musharraf was a perfect illustration of the army's mentality. General Sultan, who had been sitting behind the president taking notes throughout, called us over and proceeded to review the interview line by line. "Can you cut this sentence out?" he asked. "And that sentence; and this word in the sentence after that?" The producer and I looked at each other in amazement.
The army has the habit of controlling everything. The richest, most politically active and most zealot-ridden institution in Pakistan, it helped create the Taliban and the jihadi madrasas, and it propped up the religious opposition. It was the former military ruler, General Zia ul-Haq, who enshrined the sharia in law. Those who think Pakistan's military rulers will rescue them from extremism are barking up the wrong tree.
What is most surprising to a visitor from the west is that, despite the military, an alternative, progressive interpretation of Islam is gaining strength. This is the force that can lead Pakistan out of its darkness; these are the people - not Musharraf and his supporters - who need our backing in the fight against extremism.
While Pakistan still struggles with its military rulers, Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has emerged from a long military dictatorship. Here, the impact of democracy is evident. In Jakarta I met Ulil Abshar Abdalla, founder of the Liberal Islam Network (JIL). In his mid-thirties, Ulil was educated at local seminaries and is a highly qualified religious scholar. What is needed, he says, is "freedom to think, to question". Indonesia has a great tradition of intellectual debate and political dissent, and democracy has given that tradition its head.
The outcome is a radically transformed relationship between Islam and the state. Conventionally, Muslims have shaped the debate in terms of the "Islamic state" - that is, a state ruled by Islam with sharia as the state law. The progressive and liberal groups in Indonesia now seek to redirect political Islam towards shaping a civic society. And in the words of Abdul Mukti, the youth leader of Muhammadiyah, an organisation with more than 40 million followers: "It is time to rethink Islam without the sharia."
I have not seen that kind of boldness anywhere else, and yet it comes from within Muslim history: it represents a revival of the rationalist tradition of Islam. Liberal scholars and thinkers are using a rational, as opposed to literal, interpretation of Islamic texts. They view religious faith as a relative concept and believe in the separation of religion and state. This approach is the talk of the town in Jakarta. We even filmed the broadcast of the country's first mainstream television programme devoted to exploring rationalist and pluralistic interpretations of Islam. This is not the medieval Islam of western caricature, but something open and dynamic.
I believe the changes ushered in by democratic liberal thought in Indonesia are irreversible. Conservative forces are in retreat, even if they are not going quietly. Several fatwas have been issued against Ulil. "Are you worried?" I asked. He laughed. "I think a lot of people are upset at what we have to say, but many other people are happy." In July the conservative religious scholars of the Indonesian Ulama Council issued another fatwa. Liberalism, secularism and pluralism "contradict Islamic teachings", it said, while the JIL and Muhammadiyah Youth Intellectuals Network were "deviant". The last hurrah of a dying tradition.
While Indonesia is being transformed from the grass roots, its neighbour Malaysia is being changed from the top. For a quarter of a century it was ruled by the fiercely independent and authoritarian Mahathir Mohamad, who shaped it as a developed and wealthy country, a shoppers' paradise. In 2003, Mahathir's mantle passed to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who took over as prime minister. He is a man with ideas about the future of Islam.
I interviewed him in Putrajaya, the new administrative centre, which looks like a 1950s Hollywood set for an Arabian Nights epic. Apart from a lonely guard at the gate of his residence, there was no security. Badawi struck me as deeply religious and passionate. "My idea of progressive Islam," he insisted, "is nothing new." The prime minister calls his interpretation "Islam Hadhari", deliberately using the classic Islamic term for urban culture and civilisation. He wants the Muslims of Malaysia to focus on cultural and economic development and embrace modernity wholeheartedly. "There is nothing in Islam that is against modernity or against progress," he says. The emphasis on urban culture is deliberate - the conservative Islam of the Islamic party Pas is largely confined to rural areas. So by focusing on urban development and urban civic culture, Badawi is pitting his interpretation against conventional, traditionalist notions of Islam. Moreover, while the traditionalists emphasise the past, Islam Hadhari emphasises the present and the future. While the conservatives focus on piety, Islam Hadhari focuses on practicality.
Malaysia is a deeply conformist society. Unlike Indo-nesia, it does not have a strong intellectual tradition. Everything revolves around the personality and authority of the prime minister. If Badawi tells his citizens to be tolerant and modern, the likelihood is that they will be tolerant and modern.