Islam & the misguided liberal

Book review of 'The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State'

The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State

Tarek Fatah

Kautilya Books, New Delhi 

Third Indian Edition 2017

Pages 403, Rs 499

Tarek Fatah describes himself as a secularist and liberal activist. He was born in a Punjabi family that moved from Bombay to Karachi after Partition. Canada is now his home where he has involved himself with different political parties, and challenges what he sees as the increasing accommodation of conservative, even radical, Islamic trends in Canadian politics. 

Mr Fatah does not mince his words: he sees Muslims mired in a “nightmare of despair and failure”, with an “addiction to victimhood” and suffering from “self-inflicted wounds”. He berates Muslim political and religious leaders for their “lack of honesty”, and insists that “it is not Islam that needs to be revised or reformed, but Muslims’ relationship with their faith”, commencing with a thorough review of Islamic history “without prejudice”. 

The author distinguishes between Muslims and Islamists: the first seek the “state of Islam”, the state of spirituality, while the latter seek an “Islamic State”, a theocracy built on a gross misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Islamic doctrine and history. This book is a robust corrective, seeking to expose Islamism as a “fascist ideology” that is pursuing a “worldwide Caliphate” by eliminating or dominating all infidel non-Muslims.

In this context, Mr Fatah examines the attempts to set up Islamic theocracies in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and notes their oppression of their citizens and the “bankruptcy” of the idea of the Islamic State. He then provides a thumbnail sketch of Islamic history over a hundred pages, pointing out along the way how the opportunism of political interests has consistently diluted the essential spiritual message of the faith. 

Mr Fatah’s approach is aggressive, shrill and polemical. This leads him frequently into over-statement, misrepresentation and gross error, so that he is finally more of a pamphleteer than a judicious scholar. This seriously weakens what might have been an important contribution to the debate relating to contemporary Islam, the faith, and the reconciliation of this faith with politics.

While castigating the increasing influence of rigid doctrines masquerading as “Islamic” in Muslim polities, Mr Fatah fails to note that today every major faith has a political tendency that is rigid, doctrinaire and often violent, and seeks to influence state order on this basis. These include: Zionism, Hindutva, the Khalistan movement, and various militant Christian movements in the US. All three Semitic traditions have strong messianic content, which has been used to inflict horrendous violence against the “Other” based on divine sanction.

Mr Fatah seems to have a simplistic understanding of Political Islam. He fails to see its diverse articulations, ranging from rigidity and literalism to extraordinary moderation and plurality. The pioneers of Islamic modernity, Jamaluddin Afghani, Mohammed Abduh and Rashid Rida, had very different approaches to reconciling Islam with contemporary challenges, one strongly anti-imperialist, the other moderate and accommodative, while the third was more conservative, though all three advocated the need to reinterpret old texts to make them relevant to modern times.

This pattern continued through the 20th century. Yes, there was the aggressive assertions of Maudoodi and Sayyid Qutb, but they were balanced by liberal intellectuals such as: Mohammed Said al Ashmawi, Khalid Mohammed Khalid, and Mohammed Salem al Awwa, who saw no contradiction between Islam and modernity and advocated popular participation in governance. Even conservative political activists such as Hassan Turabi and Rachid Ghannouchi have espoused a democratic order, as do the Sahwa activists in Saudi Arabia, who are firmly anchored in Islam. 

Islamists hark back to the golden age of the “pious ancestors” of early Islam, not to replicate that era, but to draw principles, such as shura (consultation), adl (justice), bayat (allegiance to a righteous ruler) and ijma (consensus), that provide the basis for a transparent and accountable order. During most of Muslim history, rulers and judges utilised the flexibilities offered by the principle of masalaha (public welfare), rather than the literal injunctions of Sharia. 

Mr Fatah’s history of Islam is glib and highly selective. No, Muslims do not disdain the West or reject the Enlightenment; they rejected imperialism and what the colonies experienced was not enlightenment but racism, abuse and exploitation. 

Yes, there are racist attitudes among Muslims, in violation of Islamic tenets; but, racism is alive and kicking in all contemporary Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu societies.

No, most authoritarian states across West Asia are not informed by Islam: they are the product of deliberate western interventions and manipulations over the last century. And, republican tyrannies that emerged from coups d’etats are “secular”, not Islamic, in character, and generally enjoy western support.

And, no, most Muslims globally do not support the Islamic State or jihad, nor do they suffer from a “collective sense of despair and loss of confidence”. While at home, they often live under authoritarian rulers who subserve western interests to remain in power, in the diaspora they are upright and productive citizens, even though they are increasingly the targets of Islamophobia.

Mr Fatah spends a lot of space pointing out that many beliefs and practices that are promoted as Islamic do not enjoy sanction from the sacred texts of the faith. This is not surprising: Islam is not monolithic; it is over 1,400 years old and covers the entire global landscape. Its texts have been commented on over centuries by diverse scholars whose thinking was generally influenced by contemporary events. Modern-day movements draw on this earlier scholarship most selectively, largely to imbue their own beliefs and actions with doctrinal approval.

Mr Fatah’s ideal is a liberal and secular order. But, he would have done well to recognise that these principles are already under threat in the very societies that spawned them, societies where racism, intolerance, violence and abuse of the “Other”, often the Muslim, is now widespread.
 

The reviewer, a former diplomat, holds the Ram Sathe Chair for International Studies, Symbiosis International University, Pune.