Amidst growing concern over the wave of fundamentalism in the Muslim world, it is necessary to note that orthodoxy still remains the dominant feature of Indian Islam. Orthodoxy shares two features with fundamentalism. It too idolises the ‘golden age’ of early Islam and rejects liberal Western values such as the primacy of the individual, freedom of expression, and equality of sexes. That makes it difficult to distinguish the two.
The two are, however, very different propositions. While the fundamentalists want radically to change Muslim societies and establish nizam-e-mustafa, as defined principally by Maulana Maudoodi of the sub-continent, and Qutb of Egypt, in recent times, the orthodox want essentially to be left alone to live as they have for centuries. To put it differently, while fundamentalism is activist, militant, revolutionary and seeks political power above all else, orthodoxy is conservative, quiescent and pietistic.
Recent Phenomenon
Islamic fundamentalism is a relatively recent phenomenon. It represents as much a radical rejection of Muslim history and indeed civilisation as it represents reaction to Western penetration of Muslim societies, economies and polities. The first point generally gets ignored in the public discourse since attention is focussed on the anti-Western activities and rhetoric of the fundamentalists. Two points may be made in this regard.
Whatever the fundamentalists may say or believe, faith and power have not been combined in one institution in Islam with the exception of the Prophet in Medina and the first four caliphs, that is a period of less than 50 years when Islam had not crystallised into a coherent body of doctrines and practices. Indeed, the men of faith (ulema ) have been subordinate to the men of power (kings, courtiers and generals) almost all through Muslim history and power has come from edge of the sword or barrel of the gun.
If it is true that rulers have depended on the ulema for ‘legitimacy’, it is equally indisputable that the latter have as a rule been dependent on them for their living and more than willing to endorse whatever the former have done. Sunni ulema have almost never endorsed revolt against even thoroughly unjust, corrupt and cruel rulers.
Al-Ghazzali, one of the greatest thinkers in medieval Islam, expounded the theory that a corrupt and cruel ruler was to be preferred to the risk of anarchy. Fitna (challenge to authority) is impermissible in Islam, though it has been a grim and permanent reality in Muslim history. The fundamentalists are challenging Ghazzali and other great theologians of Islam. They openly preach revolt against constituted authority in Muslim countries.
Similarly, it is for the first time in Muslim history that the principle of justice is sought to be interpreted in anti-hierarchical terms. The concept of the equality of the faithful in the religious realm is now sought to be transposed into the social realm as well.
Muslim societies have been hierarchical. The gap between and among the ashraf (the respectable and the respected) and the atrap (the common plebian) in Muslim societies has been as wide as between similar groups in any other community. And ethnic considerations have not been absent in this distinction.
In British India, for instance, men like Sir Sayyid Ahmed took it for granted that the ashraf (invariably men who could claim foreign descent and aristocratic family background) were the natural leaders of the Muslim community, that the local converts too, those from the upper castes such as Brahmins and Rajputs were entitled to precedence over those from lower castes. That was one reason these thinkers were contemptuous of democracy, “politics of counting of heads”, as they described it.
While these distinctions still remain effective in practice, they cannot be invoked in Muslim countries. They are no longer legitimate. Which is to say that they are not in conformity with the spirit of the age. In plain terms, Marxism and other varieties and socialism, with their accent on equality and distributive justice, have had a deep impact on the Muslim world as well. Indeed, Islamic fundamentalism is its product.
Muslim Orthodoxy
Muslim orthodoxy does not bear the impress of Marxism or socialism in any significant sense. Syed Shahabuddin incidentally was a Marxist in his student days. That is why he is so different from most other Muslim leaders in India. He is an activist constrained by realities of the Indian situation.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Muslims were not free to practise their religion there and Islamic fundamentalists were in conflict with regimes Moscow supported in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, for example. And in Afghanistan, they fought a 10-year-long war with the Soviet Union itself. Now in the predominantly Muslim republics in Central Asia, former communists turned nationalists are under pressure from supporters of Islam. But despite such conflicts and sharp differences on issues such as the status of women, Islamic fundamentalism is an ideological successor to the failed Soviet experiment and equally out of step with the modern world. Witness the controversy over the admissibility or non-admissibility of interest in a modern banking system!
There has existed a meeting ground between the two. That meeting ground has been the primacy of collectivity over the individual in Islam as well as in communism. Like Islam, communism too harks back to a primitive past despite its claims to being a legatee of French enlightenment and revolution.
Thus Muslim fundamentalists reject only part of the West, the liberal part, and accept, even if without being aware, the non-liberal or the anti-liberal West. Thus before World War II the fundamentalists in West Asia were supportive of the Nazis not only because the Nazis challenged the British and the French but also because they propounded and propagated a collectivist ideology.
Indian Situation
In India, while the situation favours orthodoxy and admits of militancy up to a point, as is currently in evidence in respect of the controversy in the Jamia Millia, it does not admit of fundamentalism. Advocacy of jihad (holy war), for example, is out of the question in India in view of correlation of forces. Indeed, even the most adventurist and irrational Muslim cannot advocate rejection for India as a whole of the key Western liberal concepts of democracy and secularism since these assure for the community participation in the political process and enable it to preserve and even strengthen its identity. In plain terms, Muslims have no option but to accept the status quo and by and large they do. They ask to be left alone. They should be left alone.
The concepts of democracy and secularism can in theory threaten to disrupt the community by encouraging individualism and challenge to the ijma (consensus)… In reality they do not. The liberal challenge from both within and without remains and is likely to remain feeble for the foreseeable future. The community has drawn a great China wall around it which cannot be easily breached.
It is notable that in the current controversy in the Jamia Millia, liberal Muslims have contented themselves with the assertion of the principle of freedom of expression. As for the challenge from other Indians outside of the community, it is virtually non-existent. The secularism-pseudo-secularism debate has been and remains a non-Muslim, indeed essentially an intra-Hindu affair. So does the desirability or otherwise of a common civil code. All said and done, this is not a situation the rest of us can hope to change. We have to live with it and we can live with it reasonably well.
The Times of India, 18 June 1992