Science ends here and other NFP articles

[Prometheus]

Science ends here

Nadeem F. Paracha

 

I am itching to get my hands on a recently published book, God Created the Universe by Fatehulla Khan. After reading the review of the book, I can safely assume it is yet another document in the long line of glorified assertions that much of what we call scientific truths today was mentioned in the scriptures a long time ago.

 

Ever since the late French physician, Maurice Bucaille — on a hefty payroll of the Saudi royal family in Riyadh — wrote Islam, Bible & Science (1976), many believe that ‘proving’ scientific truths from holy books has been the exclusive domain of Muslims. However, in spite of being impressed by the holy book’s ‘scientific wonders’, Bucaille remained a committed Christian.

 

Very few of my wide-eyed brethren know that long before Muslims, certain Hindu and Christian theologians had already laid claim to the practice of defining their respective holy books as metaphoric prophecies of scientifically proven phenomenon. They began doing so between the 18th and 19th centuries, whereas Muslims got into the act only in the 20th century.

 

Johannes Heinrich’s Scientific vindication of Christianity (1887) is one example, while Mohan Roy’s Vedic Physics: Scientific Origin of Hinduism (1999) is a good way of observing how this thought has evolved among followers of other faiths. It is interesting to note how a number of Muslim ‘scientists’ have laboured hard to come up with convoluted interpretations of certain scriptures. Ironically, their ancient counterparts, especially between the 8th and 13th centuries in Baghdad and Persia, had put all effort in trying to understand natural phenomena and the human body and mind through hardcore science and philosophy.

 

Those great men of Islamic antiquity weren’t over-reading into divine texts for scientific answers; instead, to them God’s command to reflect on nature and the world around them was enough to inspire them to become dedicated rational scientists and philosophers. They were celebrated not only by Muslims, but humanity at large for their scientific prowess.

 

But, alas, beginning around the early 1970s, with the collapse of a secular nationalist mindset in the Muslim world, and the rise in influence of totalitarian oil-rich puritanical monarchies, Muslim polities and mindset began to suspect science as a tool of western and communist social engineering and imperialism.

 

Whereas the wealthy monarchies remained firmly in the western camp during the Cold War, they aggressively proliferated reactionary literature that attacked both western and Marxist ideas across the Muslim world. Added to this was the propagated perception that modern science was the creation of the continuing Judo-Christian tradition (nay, ‘conspiracy’) aimed at undermining Islam.

 

Many Arab as well as some western academics (who were paid large sums of money and perks) were continuously invited to the rich, conservative kingdoms and asked to scribble books claiming that the Muslim holy book was punctuated with scientific truths hundreds of years before the West discovered them in their labs.

 

This practice — clearly emerging from a mixture of an inferiority complex and the passion for shouting down modern liberal and leftist notions — sanctified myopia and an unscientific bent of mind in the Muslim world. As many Muslim scientists such as Ziauddin Sardar and Pervez Hoodbhoy, and renowned Islamic scholars like Muhammad Akhund, have already lamented, Muslims through such literature are actually encouraged to drop out of any field or lab work required for genuine scientific research. Many are persuaded to follow the belief that all they need to know about science is already in the holy book.

 

Rationalist Islamic scholars have been insisting throughout the 20th century to date that the holy book is less a book of laws or science. It is an elaborate moral guide for Muslims in which God has given the individual the freewill to decide for him or herself through exerting their mental faculties and striving to gain more empirical knowledge.

 

Iranian writer, Vali Reza Nasr, is right to mourn the trend today that though most Muslims are quick to adopt western science, they simply refuse to assume a rational scientific mindset. No wonder then, for example, most Pakistanis still don’t have a clue about what the country’s only Nobel Prize winning scientist, Dr Abdus Salam, got the award for, but many are quick to quote from books written by super cranks like Harun Yahya and Maurice Bucaille, explaining how things like the Big Bang and others are endorsed in the holy book.

 

In addition to such claptrap, there are already books out there claiming that electricity can be generated from jinns. A whole session was organised in Islamabad in the late 1980s during the Ziaul Haq regime in which fringe crackpots (disguised as scientists) were invited by the dictator to determine the ‘speed of heaven’, and how to overcome the energy crisis with the aid of jinns!

 

So why read books of science, or enter a lab to understand the many workings of God’s nature and creatures; just read the holy book. Who knows you may find a theory on time travel and laser guns in it as well? Forget about all those great Muslim scientists of yore, or Abdus Salam, Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Just get in touch with your friendly neighbourhood jinn for all your energy needs.

[Prometheus]

Understanding Political Islam

NFP

 

Islamic Fundamentalism:

Though usually attributed to the beliefs of modern-day extremist movements in Islam, Islamic Fundamentalism (in the political context), is basically a firm belief in the theological musings of ancient Islamic jurists and scholars.

 

Islamic Fundamentalists all agree with Imam Ghazali’s dictum (in the twelfth century), that the ‘gates of ijtihad (rational debate) in Islam are now closed.’

 

After about three hundred years of open debate in the Islamic world between conservatives and the rationalists (Mu’tazilites), Ghazali insisted that a perfect synthesis (between the two) had been reached and that Islam’s social and spiritual philosophy had achieved completion.

 

The Mu’tazilites’ influence began declining during the rule of the ninth Abbasid caliph, Al-Muttawakkil, and the conservatives, who had ferociously debated with the rationalists, began their ascendance.

 

Modern-day Islamic Fundamentalism is rooted in this bygone intellectual triumph of the conservatives. Nevertheless, Islamic Fundamentalism never did attempt to form a so-called ‘Islamic state.’ Islamic Fundamentalists in the shape of scholars (ulema) and clergymen (maulvis and imams), mostly worked as advisers to caliphs and kings, or in the mosques. They were only interested in advocating Islamic laws, but never articulated a political plan that would carry these laws.

 

At the dilapidation of the Muslim empires starting from the eighteenth century onwards, the many reformist Islamic movements which then emerged, criticised the performance of Islamic Fundamentalists, blaming them for getting too close to the ‘decadent’ kings due to whose ‘negligence of Islam,’ Islamic political power had crumbled.

 

Islamic Fundamentalism has historically been more interested in rectifying ‘cultural and social deviances’ in a Muslim society and for this it used the mosque and evangelism – not politics. It continues to be frozen in an understanding of the Quran, the hadith and Shariah developed centuries ago by ancient Islamic scholars. Though it is vocal in its rhetorical demands for the imposition of Islamic laws, it has little or no political agenda as such. It never did.

 

It remains largely associated with apolitical Muslim individuals, conservative ulema, the clergy and Islamic evangelists.

 

Noted Islamic Fundamentalist Groups: The Tableeghi Jamaat (Pakistan/Bangladesh/India); Al-Huda (Pakistan/Canada); Islamic Research Foundation (India).

 

Islamism:

Word coined in the early 1970s (in France), to explain a series of (post-nineteenth century) Islamic movements which advocated Islam not only as a religion, but also as a political system.

 

Islamism’s roots can be found in the Islamic reformist movements that appeared in the subcontinent and in Arabia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Incensed by the largely pluralistic dispositions of the crumbling Mughal and Ottoman empires, a series of reformist movements emerged, advocating a so-called return to Islam followed by the first four pious Caliphs.

 

Some of these movements emphasised on applying reason in religion, but many also added the importance of ‘jihad’ not only against western colonialism but also against the clergy and especially, against Sufism which these reformists believed was a ‘negative innovation’ and an anathema to ‘true Islam.’

 

Such movements though animated, came to a naught, mostly due to the adjustments the more moderate/modern as well as traditional schools of Islam made at the wake of the rise of western colonialism.

 

At the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate (1922), a bulk of Muslim regimes (especially in Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey) vigorously adopted modern western economic, social and political models (i.e., capitalism, social liberalism and nationalism [but sans democracy]).

 

One of the first experiments in Islamism took off when (in the early twentieth century) the Al-Saud family conquered a vast tract in Arabia (with the tacit support of the British who were trying to undermine the crumbling Ottoman rule in the region).

 

The Al-Saud were ardent followers of Abd Al-Wahhab – an eighteenth century puritanical Islamic reformist. The Saud family soon enacted the world’s first ‘Islamic State,’ but under the control of a monarchy.

 

The Saud family’s adherence to puritanical Islam and imposition of harsh Islamic laws went down well with the early Islamists, but the family’s growing ties with the British and it monarchical tendencies, made a lot of them uncomfortable.

 

As secular-nationalists dominated the liberation movements in most Muslim countries (including the separatist Muslim manoeuvres in India), politicised conservative Muslim scholars retaliated by labelling these movements as ‘anti-Islamic.’

 

Pioneering Islamist scholars such as Egypt’s Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb, and the subcontinent’s Abul Ala Maududi began interpreting the Quran and the hadith by using modern political concepts and terms. For example, Maududi expanded the Quranic concept of Tauheed (oneness of God) by suggesting that it also meant the (political) oneness of the Muslim ummah that can only be achieved by ‘Islamising the society’ and through attaining state power to finally formulate an ‘Islamic state.’

 

Qutb, on the other hand, implied that twentieth century Muslim societies were in a state of jahiliyya – a term used by classical Muslim scholars to define the state of ignorance the people of Arabia were in before the arrival of Islam.

 

Qutb suggested that a jihad was required in Muslim countries to grab state power and to rid the Muslims from the ‘modern forces of jahilyiya’ (i.e., secularism, Marxism, ‘western materialism’).

 

It must be emphasised that the concept of the Islamic State is thus very much a twentieth century construct.

 

That is why the theory of Islamism purposefully eschewed a number of ancient commentaries on Quran and Shariah. They rejected these scholarly works as being either ‘stuck in the mosque’ or undertaken to serve kings who had divorced Islam from politics. It is however, ironic that Islamism (across the Cold War [1947-91]), was largely supported and funded by Western and Arab powers who were up against what was called the ‘Soviet camp.’

 

For example, it is now well-known how the United States and its Western and Arab allies (especially Saudi Arabia), funded various early Islamist movements to undermine left-leaning governments and elements in the Muslim world.

 

The exceptions in this respect were the Iranian Islamists. They successfully steered the 1979 revolution in Iran towards becoming an Islamic one. Iran also remains to be Islamism’s only tangible project.

 

The arrangement between Islamists and its Western and Saudi backers reached a peak in the 1980s during the ‘anti-Soviet jihad’ in Afghanistan.

 

With the fall of the Soviet Union however, and the drying up of the patronage and funds Islamism’s leading organs were receiving (from the West), movements attached to Islamism started to weaken. Consequently, Islamism’s less intellectually inclined (and more brutal) cousin, Neo-Fundamentalism, soon began usurping its agenda.

 

Noted Islamism groups: Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt); Jamaat-i-Islami (Pakistan); Islamic Republican Party (Iran); National Islamic Front (Sudan); Hamas (Palestine); Hezbollah (Lebanon).

 

Islamic Neo-Fundamentalism:

Neo-Fundamentalism in Islam is a tendency among certain modern-day Islamic fundamentalists to politicise the social and cultural aspects of Islamic Fundamentalism.

 

Neo-Fundamentalism rose with the emergence of the Taliban in 1996 (in Afghanistan and Pakistan), and began filling the void created by the post-Cold War weakening of Islamism.

 

Like traditional Islamic Fundamentalism, Neo-Fundamentalism too maintains that the gates of ijtihad in Islam are closed. However, unlike Islamic Fundamentalism, Neo-Fundamentalism wants to impose Islamic laws, morality and piety by force and through the creation of an ‘Islamic State’ (and/or ‘Islamic Emirate’).

 

Where Islamic Fundamentalists used concentrated evangelical tactics to cleanse Muslim societies of ‘un-Islamic practices,’ Neo-Fundamentalists use political violence, coercion and terrorism.

 

Noted Islamic Neo-Fundamentalist groups: al Qaeda; the Taliban (Pakistan/Afghanistan); Islamic Salvation Army (Algeria); Armed Islamic Group (Algeria); Union of Islamic Courts (Somalia).

 

Islamic Socialism:

A term first used by the Muslim Socialist community in Kazan (Russia) just before the 1917 Communist revolution there. Staunchly anti-clerical, the community supported communist forces but retained its Muslim identity.

The term then became popular with certain Muslim members of the Indian National Congress Party and among some left-leaning sections of the All Indian Muslim League.

 

Islamic Socialism, as an ideology, attempted to equate Quranic concepts of equality and charity with modern Socialist economics, was adopted (as ‘Arab Socialism’) in Iraq, Syria and Egypt, where secular Muslim leaders fused Islamic notions of parity and justice with socialism and Arab nationalism.

 

Though known for its usage of Islamic symbolism, Islamic Socialism was staunchly secular, anti-clerical, socially liberal and mostly sympathetic to the Soviet Union.

 

Egypt’s popular leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, became Arab Socialism’s leading advocate and practitioner; while in Syria and Iraq the concept became to be known as ‘Ba’ath Socialism.’After the political success of Islamic Socialism in these countries, the idea also gained currency in Pakistan, Algeria and Libya.

 

The National Liberation Front that led Algeria’s independence from France (1962) described itself as a follower of Islamic Socialism, and so did the populist Pakistan Peoples Party (that swept into power in 1970).

 

Libya too, began calling itself an Islamic Socialist state after Muammar al-Gaddafi toppled the old Libyan monarchy in a coup in 1969. Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) also described itself as Islamic Socialist.

 

In Iran, radical leftist anti-Shah militant organisations that fused Islamic symbolism with Marxist/socialist ideas also appeared. They took an active part in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, but were then eliminated or banished by the new Islamic regime.

 

Islamic Socialism was vehemently attacked and criticised by conservative Muslim countries (mainly Saudi Arabia), as well as by those forces associated with Islamism (such as Jamaat-i-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood).The charisma attached to Islamic Socialism began to wither after the death of Nasser, and when most Muslim countries began getting politically closer to the conservative oil-rich Arab countries.

 

The oil crises of 1973-74 (when OPEC initiated an oil embargo) eventually saw the economic policies of regimes professing Islamic Socialism come under great stress, creating disillusionment among the masses who began being drawn towards advocates of Islamism. The last major expression of Islamic Socialism was the (Soviet-backed) ‘Saur Revolution’ in Afghanistan in 1978, led by the People’s Democratic Party.

 

Major Islamic Socialist groups: Revolutionary Command Council (Egypt); Egyptian Arab Socialist Party (Egypt); Iraq Ba’ath Socialist Party (Iraq); Syrian Ba’ath Socialist Party (Syria); National Liberation Front (Algeria); Pakistan Peoples Party (Pakistan); PLO (Palestine); National Front (Iran); Mojahedin-e-Khalq (Iran); Peoples Fadaeen (Iran).

 

Liberal Islam:

Though many liberal Muslims consider 8th and 9th century Islamic rationalists (the Mu’tazilites) to be the first political and philosophical expressions of Liberal Islam, in the political context) Liberal Islam, just like all other branches of Political Islam, too is a late nineteenth/early twentieth century creation – despite the fact that there is historical accuracy in the claim that major Muslim empires of yore were largely pluralistic and secular in orientation.

 

Again, in the political context, Liberal Islam can find its roots in some nineteenth century reformist movements (Sir Syed Ahmed Khan in India), and the way Muslim countries such as Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey adopted secular western economic and social models in the early twentieth century.

 

The emergence of the secular-nationalist movements in the Muslim world too, gave impetus to the thought attached to Liberal Islam, and so did the coming to prominence of effusive ideologies such as Islamic Socialism. Liberal Islam has been a flexible entity. Both left and rightist political instruments profess it, as long as they are predominantly secular. Many democratic political parties of the left and of the right, as well as authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world can be termed as having liberal views about Islam.

 

These parties and regimes are highly suspicious of the clergy and repulsed by the political ambitions of Islamism and Neo-Fundamentalism. They encourage ijtihad in matters like the Quran and Shariah, and emphasise that Islam is best served through the mosque instead of through the state or the government.

 

An emphasis on multiculturalism, nationalism and democratic pluralism too is made, even though, as mentioned before, some Liberal Muslim organs can be authoritarian as well.

 

Most mainstream political parties in the Muslim world today can be said to be following various degrees of Liberal Islam. Not all of them are secular in the western sense of the word, but they are flexible in their outlook towards matters such as Islamic laws, and concepts and practices that are deemed as ‘un-Islamic’ by their Islamist opponents (such as co-education, non-segregated events, women’s rights, films, music, alcohol, etc.).

 

Noted Liberal Islam political parties with large vote banks: Indonesian Democratic Party; People’s Alliance (Malaysia); National Liberation Front (Algeria); Bangladesh Awami League (Bangladesh); National Democratic Party (Egypt); Maldivian Democratic Party (Maldives); Socialist Union (Morocco); Popular Movement (Morocco); Action Congress (Nigeria); Pakistan Peoples Party (Pakistan); Muttahida Qaumi Movement (Pakistan); Awami National Party (Pakistan); People’s Democratic Party (Tajikistan); Republican People’s Party (Turkey); Justice & Development Party (Turkey); Liberal Democratic Party (Uzbekistan).

[Prometheus]

Naked Lunch, Blow daddy (satirical piece )

NFP

 

Daddy?

Yes, son.

Are we going to have a war with India?

Perhaps.

Oh, goody. We will thrash them, right? Like we did in 1857!

It wasn’t in 1857, son.

Oh, okay. But whom did we thrash in 1857?

The British, son…

And the Hindus too, right?

Well…

Did Quaid-i-Azam fight in that war along with Muhammad bin Qasim and Imran Khan?

No, son. The Quaid and Imran were born much later and Muhammad bin Qasim died many years before.

Then who ruled Pakistan in those days?

There was no Pakistan in those days, son.

But there was always a Pakistan! It has been there for 5,000 years!

Who have you been talking to, son?

No one. I’ve just been watching TV.

It figures.

Daddy, why are all these people against us Arabs?

Arabs? But we aren’t Arabs, son.

Of course we are because our ancestors were Arabs!

No, son. Our ancestors were of the subcontinental stock.

Sub-what?

Never mind.You seem to like wars, son.

Yes. I like to watch them on TV.

But real wars are fought outside the TV, son.

Really? How is that possible? What sort of a war is that?

Never mind.

Daddy, you look worried.

Of course, I am, you little warmongering punk!

Daddy! Why are you scolding me?

Because TV is talking rot and so are you!

Daddy, are you supporting Hindus?

No!

Daddy, have you become a kafir?

Keep quiet! No more TV for you! Go watch a movie on DVD or listen to a CD.

Can’t do that.

But we have so many DVDs and CDs, son.

Not any more.

What do you mean?

I burned them all.

What?!

I burned them all.

I heard that! But why?

They spread obscenity.

Oh, God. Son, go do your homework. What happened to that science project you were working on?

It’s almost complete.

Good boy. What are you making?

A bomb.

What?!

A bomb.

I heard that! But why?

Because I am a true Muslim who hates America.

But only last week you wanted to go to Disney Land.

That’s different.

How come?

Mickey Mouse is Muslim.

No, he isn’t.

Is so. He converted when he heard azaan on the moon.

On the moon?

Yes. Because the earth is flat and…

What??

The earth is…

I heard that!

Daddy, do you want to see my science project, or not?

Gosh, that bomb? But your science teacher will fail you.

No, she wont.

Really?

Yes. I plan to blow her up as well.

God, what is wrong with you? Go call your mother!

She can’t come.

Why not?

I’ve locked her in the kitchen.

But what for?

A woman’s place is in the kitchen. I will not let her out until she covers herself up peoperly!

But she’s your mother!

She’s also a woman!

So?

So she should be hidden.

Hidden from whom?

The whole world and Tony.

Tony?

Yes, Tony.

But Tony’s a cat.

Yes. But he’s male.

Son, have you gone mad?

No. By the way, I’ve made sure Kitto starts covering up as well.

Kitto?

Yes, Kittto.

But Kitto’s a cat!

Yes. But a female cat.

But she’ll suffocate.

Oh, she’s already dead.

What?

She’s already dead.

I heard that! But how?

I buried her alive.

You what?

Yes. To avenge Tony’s honour. But now I will behead Tony.

But why?

To save mom’s honour!

Oh, God!

Don’t say that. Always say Allah.

What’s the difference?

Daddy, do you want to be beheaded too?

No!

Do you want to be stoned to death?

No!

Do you want to be flogged?

No!

Do you want to get your arms chopped off?

No!

Then stop asking silly questions. By the way, I won’t call you daddy anymore.

What will you call me then?

Whatever that is Arabic for daddy.

I don’t know any Arabic, son.

That’s because you are a kafir.

Who the heck are you to tell me who I am, you little fascist twit!

What’s a fascist?

An irrational, violent, self-righteous mad man!

W... aaaaaaa...

Why are you crying?

You scolded me.

Okay, I’m sorry. You have to be tolerant and rational, son. Now be a good boy and go read a book instead of watching TV.

I have no books.

Of course, you do. I bought you so many books.

I burned them.

What?

I burned them.

But why?

They were all in English.

So?

It’s a non-Muslim language!

But we are speaking English, aren’t we?

W... aaaaaaa…

What now?

Zionists made me forget my Arabic.

But you never knew any Arabic, son.

W... aaaa… yes, I did until you and mommy gave me the polio drops… aaaaa…

Okay, tell me, can you do me a favour?

Sure, dad.

Can you blow up something for me?

Oh, goody! Of course, dad. What should I blow? A CD shop, a hotel, a school...?

No, no, something a lot more sinister.

Mom?

No, no…

What then?

The TV set!

What?

Blow the TV set.

I heard that! But why?

Just do it!

I see. Dad?

Yes.

You’re so unconstitutional!