THE CASE FOR ISLAMIC REFORM/Tufail Ahmad, a former journalist with the BBC Urdu Service and Director of South Asia Studies Project at the Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington DC In Islam, the concept of god is dual: as Rahman and raheem (gracious and merciful), and as jabbar and qahhar (mighty and punishing). The need of the hour is that Indian Islamic scholars sit down and think through the relevance of the Quranic verses for the modern age, and assess what kind of teachings Muslim youths, attracted to jihadist forces like ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, are imbibing from some verses. For meaningful Islamic reformation to begin, Islamic scholars and college- going Muslim youth must admit that there are two types of verses: those advocating peace, love and pluralism; and those that contradict these teachings. Fortunately, India has a strong legacy of Islamic reform. After the Fall of Delhi in 1857, there were two responses from within the Muslim community to revive the fortunes of Indian Muslims: one group of reformers was led by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan who stressed the need for learning European sciences and for promoting a scientific temperament among Muslims; he wrote an interpretation of the Quran and established a college for modern education, now known as the Aligarh Muslim University. The second response was led by Maulana Qasim Nanautavi who believed in Islamic revivalism as a panacea for the problems of Muslims and established the Darul Uloom Deoband, the seminary producing obscurantism and anti- women fatwas. In the post-Independence era, Maharashtra- based reformer Hamid Dalwai articulated a better model of reform as a liberty project for Indian Muslims by incorporating enlightenment ideas and arguing for the need to think beyond the frameworks of secularism and minorityism. Currently, a host of Islamic scholars and activists such as Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, late Asghar Ali Engineer, Daud Sharifa, Shaista Amber, Zeenat Shaukat Ali, Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, Uzma Naheed and others are working for reform: their work is essentially within the framework of Islam. However, Muslims must also realise that change comes from external forces: interaction through foreign ideas generated by travel, globalisation, wars and technologies. The current waves of conflict in the Middle East and Afghanistan-Pakistan region should also remind Indian Muslims that Islamic reform is urgent, and such a task must be accomplished by Islamic scholars from India. This is because India is the only country where Muslims have consistently experienced democratic values for more than half a century. There is absolutely no Muslim nation that can compare with this extraordinary experience of Indian Muslims on almost all conceivable parameters: political and religious freedom, educational and economic opportunities, freedom of thought and expression, individual liberty or right to form political association. The constitution of India contains hugely relevant ideas from the Enlightenment to address Muslim issues. However, given this context, it is a tragedy that nearly one hundred Muslims from India are fighting alongside jihadists in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Indian Muslims must admit that there is a problem of jihadism in our midst.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 08:19:23 +0000
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