by Come Carpentier de Gourdon [http://www.vijayvaani.com/AuthorProfile.aspx?pid=106] on 21 Dec 2013 Islam articulated as a political ideology is present and influential on four continents in many forms, but its current situation raises more questions than it provides answers about its destiny. Several events since the high tide of the Arab Spring of 2011 have set it back in Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Libya, Tunisia, Mali, Sudan, Somalia and Mali as well as in Yemen and even in Qatar. In brief, Islamic movements have failed to take power, have only held it briefly before being pushed back into legal or clandestine opposition or have had to back down on their ambitions. Meanwhile, Iran elected a new moderate and pragmatic president who has sought to bridge the gap with Western powers, whereas legal Islamic parties in Morocco and Algeria dont espouse the ideal of a socio-religious revolution and are instead supportive of the status quo in both countries. Even Saudi Arabia, the bedrock of conservative fundamental Islam, is trying to reform its institutions to make them more consonant with international norms and institutions by mitigating the theocratic character of its policy. After unifying most of the Arabic peninsula during the life time of the Prophet (PBUH), the Islamic state rapidly expanded throughout West Asia and North Africa under the four first khalifs before stabilizing as a tri-continental commonwealth of faith, culture and juridical institutions under the Umayyad and Abbasid rulers. It is often pointed out that in Islam there is no separation between religion and politics, but that can also be said of most creeds that are followed by a vast majority of the people in a particular area. However the fact that there are no specific founding socio-political documents for the Muslim ummah outside the Quran and the Hadith has led most Islamic social thinkers and political theorists throughout history to base all their recommendations and recipes on those texts. The noted Shafii jurist Al Mawardi (972-1058 CE) who codified most extensively the institutions of the khalifate in his Ordinances (Al Ahkam al Sultania) was criticized by other ulema for being too much of a rationalist, under the influence of the reformist and hellenizing Mutazilite school of philosophy, but the predominance of legal theories in Islamic political culture, defined by its attitude to Sharia (the religious legal code), is striking. Unlike other civilizations, the Muslim world is customarily divided according to which school (madhab) of law (Fiqh) is being followed in a particular region as there are differences, notably on who is and is not a Muslim depending upon his actions and views in many diverse areas. The madhabs are regarded almost like the separate denominations or sects in Christendom because they are indeed theologically conflictive. Mutazilites who called themselves Ahl al Tawhid wal Adl (the men of unity and justice) exemplified a pragmatic though orthodox current of thought that generally supported the Abbasid imperial state in Baghdad and held reason to be supreme as there was no sacred precedent that could be valid for all times and places. They also sought to separate the realm of social relations from the domain of religious prescriptions (faraid). Mutazilites were reviled by A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon Page 1 of 12 A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon 23-Dec-2013 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/a-history-of-political-islam-come.html hardline Sunni doctrinaires for their moderate middle path views and their refusal to take sides between the warring Sunnis and Shiites. They backed the Mihna, an ideological inquisition carried out by some of the Khalifs to purge extremist trouble makers who agitated to overthrow the reigning dynasty to bring back the primeval Arab polity set up by the Prophet. Thus struggle between realists and apocalyptic revolutionaries is an enduring aspect of history of Islamic societies and the Mutazilites may be regarded as predecessors of more recent pragmatic reformers who wish to separate social norms and regulations from purely religious obligations. Conservative, fundamentalist currents usually designated as Salafist (from the qualification given to the companions of the Prophets, the predecessors: Salaf or companions: Sahaba) are associated with the Hanbali juridical school, revived by Ibn Taimiya, that rejects innovations (bidah), analogical interpretations (qiyas), personal innovations (rayy), speculation (nazar) and mere consensual opinions (ijma) among religious scholars when not specifically supported by the foundational texts, contrary to the majoritarian Hanifi school and to the Medinite Maliki madhab which takes into account the customs and rules in practice in the first century of Islam more than the literal text of the Hadith. However all Islamic jurisprudence is based on the real or alleged precedents provided by the Salaf, so that no artificial distinction should be made between the various traditions on that score. Hanbalism also known as Takfirism harks back to the original customs and institutions of Arabic Islam under the four well guided (rashidun) khalifs. Shafiism, the school that is prevalent in Syria, Egypt, East Africa, Yemen and the Malay regions, shares the same tendency, but has been less militant in general although it holds that Jihad is justified not only in response to injustice but also to destroy idolatry (kufr). However it must be noted that even Hanafism has bred intellectual lineages that are also rigidly literal in their interpretations of Islamic legislative practice. Sufism is not as a whole a socially moderate school of thought either, since it is primarily focused on mans individual perception of and relations with the Divine and rarely interfered historically with political and military agendas. Many of the great Muslim warriors and conquerors from Mahmud of Ghazni to Timur Leng, Mehmet Fatih and Aurang Zeb were followers of Sufi Sheykhs or Peers. It might be said that political theories and practices in the Muslim world have been largely determined by legal doctrines as the essence of government lies in the dispensation of justice which crowns and subsumes all other functions of the sovereign. It is due to this concept of society that political ideologies and parties appeared only in the rather recent past in the muhammedan world and have generally not developed. The distinctiveBaathist form of Arab socialism was coined mostly by Christians and other minority groups, while the pan-Arab secular modernist creeds of national leaders such as Gamal Abd el Nasser of Egypt, Houari Boumedienne of Algeria, Saddam Hussain of Iraq or Muammar Al Qadaffi of Libya manifested in one-party militaristic states centered on the personality of the charismatic Rais: the leader, not too dissimilar in form from the Turkish model created by Kemal Ataturk whose personal prestige helped him to break the hold of religion over his countrys institutions. Page 2 of 12 A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon 23-Dec-2013 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/a-history-of-political-islam-come.html The Prophet had not left any clear instructions about how his community should rule itself, although he seems to have indicated a preference for his nephew and son-in-law Ali bin Abu Taleb to succeed him. The divisions between those Muslims who saw Ali and his descendents as the legitimate chiefs of their expanding state and those who wanted the ablest and most meritorious to inherit the Khalifate evoke in western minds familiar conflicts between royalists and republicans, but both camps, which offer the only endogenous analogy to the western political parties at least in certain respects, accepted the principle of theocracy although the split between the majority Sunnis and the minority Shiites (partisans of Ali) assumed ethnic dimensions and has become a chasm in recent years. Mass killings are a regular occurrence in Syria, Iraq and to a lesser extent in Yemen and Lebanon between the two parties and they threaten to escalate into a wider civil war from Turkey to Iran and Yemen. Iran experienced early a de facto separation between Church and State since it recovered its full independence under the indigenous Safavid dynasty in the late fifteenth century CE as the Shiite faqihs did not grant divine legitimacy to the Shahs who were not of Alis lineage, from which alone theocratic rulers could come. The long- standing tensions between temporal power and religious authority erupted in the 1979 revolution which overthrew Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. Contrary to Sunni states whose kings generally sought their legitimacy from the successive, real or nominal khalifs in Baghdad, Cairo or Istanbul, Iranian Islam had no living visible king and priest for many centuries and even the Supreme Leader of todays Islamic Republic is only a custodian of the nations faith and polity on behalf of the expected Hidden Imam (Mohammed Al Muntazer) who will come before the Last Day. The Ottoman Sultans took on the mantle of the Khalifate after 1517 and managed until their downfall in the early 20th century to retain at least the spiritual allegiance of most Sunni Muslims worldwide. In that long period however, the power of Islamic states steadily declined as a result of European overseas conquests in America, Africa and Asia, and of the Western industrial revolution. Before the end of the 19 th century, during the heyday of the Christian colonial empires and especially after the fall of the last Moghul Emperor of India at the hands of the East India Company, some reformist intellectuals in the Middle East realized that Muslim territories were falling one by one under the sway of the triumphant West and that a endogenous reaction had to be organized. One of the first and well known such pioneers of a revival was J amaluddin Afghani (1838-1897 CE) who, in keeping with the time honoured shiite practice of Takiya (dissimulation), took pains to hide his Persian identity by claiming to be an Afghan, as he wanted to appeal to all Muslims and knew that Sunnis in general would not easily heed the word of an Iranian heretic, although his views were probably inspired by the new thinking that was emerging in the Persian clergy. Afghani was studying in British India during the Sepoy rebellion of 1857 and spent much of his later life traveling the world and spreading his call for a new unified, modernised Islamic movement that could push back western invaders and occupiers. He sought and temporarily gained the hesitant support of the Turkish Sultans who had embarked on a path of gradual and halting secularization of their empire through theTanzimat reform initiated in 1839. However, J amaluddin found the imitation of western models embraced by the Istanbul Divan undesirable, Page 3 of 12 A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon 23-Dec-2013 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/a-history-of-political-islam-come.html particularly the adoption of a civil code based on the French Code Napoleon, as he advocated borrowing all suitable western science and technology in order to make Muslims equal to the Europeans but sticking to Islamic precepts of governance. Although he was not a practicing Muslim, and was even suspected of atheism as a member of the fiercely secular and leftist Grand Orient Masonic Order of France after being expelled from the Scottish Rite for agnosticism, he held Islam to be a force capable of fighting enemies back by bringing together all its followers. It is not the last time that we will see a Muslim reformer evince secular agnostic convictions in his personal life, while upholding the faith as a political force. Another one was the founder of Pakistan, Muhammed Ali J innah, a non- practicing anglophile Shiite lawyer who married a Parsee woman. In the same period, a similar modernizing movement unfolded in India under the intellectual leadership of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan who founded the Aligarh Anglo-Oriental Muhammadan College, later to become the Aligarh Muslim University. Sir Syed and his colleagues, most of whom belonged to the aristocratic and learned landed elites, wished to equip the Muslim Indian upper class with all the knowledge and technical skills of the Europeans while protecting their traditional culture and way of life from both the British occupiers and the Hindu majority. By 1906, the All India Muslim League had come into being under the chairmanship of Sir Agha Khan III (although he was the exiled Persian leader of a schismatic Shiite minority sect) and it soon attracted stalwart personalities such as the brothers Shaukat Ali and Ali J auhar, the poet and philosopher Mohammed Iqbal and the barrister J innah, many of whom were westernized and rather secular personally, but believed that Muslims were a separate nation by virtue of their faith and civilization, destined to carve out their own nation within the British Indian Empire. They also saw the worldwide Islamic community as a potential super-state. http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3049 [http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx? aid=3049] A history of political Islam II by Come Carpentier de Gourdon [http://www.vijayvaani.com/AuthorProfile.aspx?pid=106] on 22 Dec 2013 Unlike the organizations inspired by the message of J amaluddin however, the League was not fundamentally anti- colonial and indeed was opposed to violent uprisings against the British rulers which it saw as preferable to an independent Hindu-dominated India. They advocated certain social reforms in keeping with the original message of the Quran, but were rather politically conservative and economically oligarchic, except perhaps Iqbal who often voiced his opposition to the upper classes of his community whom he accused of not being truly committed to Islamic values and practices. Other leading Muslim figures of India such as Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad rejected the Leagues political philosophy and agenda, arguing against the case for a separate Islamic state and upholding instead Indias unity as a multi- Page 4 of 12 A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon 23-Dec-2013 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/a-history-of-political-islam-come.html religious nation of equal citizens. Azad, who was half-Arab through his mother and was born in Mecca, had socialist convictions and had also been attracted to Afghanis message. He had led the Indian movement to support the threatened Ottoman khalifate in its final years, but held that the religious allegiances of Muslims were compatible with loyalty to their respective countries as was the case for Roman Catholics worldwide. Afghanis disciple Muhammed Abduh and Near Eastern intellectual heirs, Rashid Rida, Said Qutb and Hassan al Banna, the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al Muslimun) in 1928, broadly adhered to the guidelines set by him, but paradoxically all were in some way associated with Salafism. Modernisation of society in technological terms was for them not incompatible with an atavistic return to the past in matters of political organization, social mores and culture since, for most of them, as for earlier reformers such as the Indian 18th century theologian Shah Waliullah of Delhi, a revival of the original institutions of the religion in the days of the Prophet was the best way to regenerate and strengthen Muslim polities. Reform to them meant going back to original forms. J amaluddin Afghani had not advocated separation of powers, parliamentary democracy or emancipation of women as they existed in Europe since he did not believe in the soundness of the political systems he found in the colonialist West and probably concluded that they would not be compatible with a dispensation based on Quranic injunctions and precepts. The common concern of those neo-conservative reformers was to unify the Islamic world under a strong, incorruptible and capable leadership that could adapt the scientific innovations of the current age to the timeless prescriptions inherited from the Prophet and his immediate successors. One of the rulers inspired by them was Amir Habibullah Khan of Afghanistan. Rebuilding the Khalifate for the worldwide ummah was a part of the plan for regeneration and since a para-statal hierarchy had to be created to combat and replace the colonial regimes and the decadent and submissive indigenous governments, the pyramidal structure of Free Masonry, often combined with the traditional structures of Sufi orders (silsilas, tariqas) was adopted by the Muslim Brotherhood. That was the time when Fascist movements and parties were arising in Europe, the Americas and the Far East and it is unsurprising that the Ikhwan were influenced by the zeitgeist and are still often accused of operating as a fascist organization, an accusation which their secretive and clandestine top down methods do little to discredit. As opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood which created an international federation of branches that extend even today from West Africa to Central Asia, each with its own guide (masul) and inspired like-minded parties in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey (the AKP: Adalet ve Kalikinma Partisi founded in 2001, in succession to a series of previously banned similar outfits and in power since 2003 is an ideological sibling of the Ikhwan), Pakistan (Jamaat e Islami), Palestine (Hamas) and even in Shiite Iran, the unreconstructed Salafis led by Abdul Wahhab in the 18th century made a pact with the ruling clan of Saud from the region of Nedjed and laid the basis for a theocratic monarchy founded on close cooperation between the religious authority of the descendents of Abdul Wahhab, the Ahl ash Sheykh, and the royal power of the scions of Ibn Saud. As a result there arose a specific nationalistic, tribal and nationalistic version of Salafism, that became gradually estranged from the pan-Islamic, republican Page 5 of 12 A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon 23-Dec-2013 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/a-history-of-political-islam-come.html Muslim Brothers whose own rival chain of command poses a threat to traditional aristocracies which it sought to replace. The breakup became apparent when the Saudi Arabian government decisively backed the military coup in Egypt against President Mohammed Morsi and his MB led administration in 2011, paradoxically calling for a military, secular regime against an Islamic one, although as a result of Riyadhs choice, the Egyptian Al NourSalafist party, generously financed by the Saudi kingdom, opportunistically joined the uprising against the Brotherhood after leaving the government to become part of the opposition and the subsequent transitional military-backed regime. The politically conservative Wahhabis are thus ranged, together with the majority of the Shafiite Egyptian ulema who defer to the clerical leadership of the Al Azhar University, against the reformist or arguably revolutionary Brotherhood, which is as conservative socially but has a different strategy and a divergent political agenda. The Ikhwans doctrine seems to imply that sooner or later they will govern a one-party state wherever they reach power, whereas the Salafists shun the concept of political parties altogether as they prefer to operate through militant cells for preaching and combat to pave the way for a Salafist theocracy. They may not all be satisfied with the situation in Saudi Arabia and with the policies of the royal family there, but they dont have a definite alternative model to propose, apart from making the Wahhabi system in force in the Saudi Kingdom more rigid and puritanical, on the lines laid out by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Lashkar e Taiba in South Asia, the Hizb ul Tahrir in Central Asia, the Al Shabab in Somalia, the J abhat al Nusra and kindred groups in Syria, Al Qaida in Iraq and in the Arabian peninsula, the Ansar al Din in the Sahara region and Boko Haram in West Africa, among the many other fighting para-military outfits that have proliferated in the Islamosphere. Hence the mother of the global Ikhwan nebula, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, is once again in the political wilderness and under the threat of a ban with confiscation of all its assets, although it runs a legal political party which officially renounced the use of violence in 1949 and yet was banned in 1952 in its homeland and in Syria in 1982 after the famous uprising it led in Hama under the iron rule of President Hafez Al Assad. In Egypt, it kept a low profile during the first stage of the 2011 Arab Spring revolution against Hosni Mubarak, who had allowed it to survive in a legal no-mans land under close surveillance. But it should be noted that Mubaraks predecessor Anwar al Sadat was killed by officers under Salafist influence and apparently unaffiliated with the Brotherhood. Contrary to the grand vision of the Brotherhood for an intercontinental khalifate, Salafist movements, whether in Nigeria, Mali, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen or Afghanistan, insofar as they have a clear political agenda beyond defeating and expelling infidels and heretics, seek to restore local emirates. Ayman al Zawahiri of Al Qaida fame, who is probably the foremost Salafi ideological leader nowadays, has condemned the Brotherhood for espousing democratic methods, making compromises with Islams enemies and not embracing the armed struggle against the West and polytheist countries such as India. Conversely, the Ikhwan have repeatedly accused the militant Salafists of giving a bad name to the religion by their ruthlessly violent actions which have led to the deaths of large numbers of innocent Muslims and mobilized the Page 6 of 12 A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon 23-Dec-2013 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/a-history-of-political-islam-come.html Bhaskar Menon 21 Hours agoaid=3051 [http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3051] A hi st or y of pol i t i cal Isl am III by Come Carpentier de Gourdon [http://www.vijayvaani.com/AuthorProfile.aspx?pid=106] on 23 Dec 2013 One can detect there an idiosyncratic reflection of the western rationalistic prejudice against any evocation of the Supernatural, but that attitude has led to the destruction of much of the architectural, sociological and artistic heritage of the countries where those radical reformers take power, as was the case in Afghanistan, in Malis ancient city of Timbuktu as also in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and since several decades in Saudi Arabia, where the hegemonic religious elite has caused the destruction western powers against the ummah while not really causing any major harm to the Zionist regime and rather, arguably, giving it a shot in the arm. Both the Salafists and the Brothers want to lead Islamic lands to the fore of technological progress while bringing their people back to an idealized version of the early religious past. Yet they also reject many of the traditions and practices of the intermediate historical periods that elapsed between the end of the reign of the first four khalifs and the centuries of submission to western imperialism. They tend to frown upon the nostalgic perpetuation (taqlid) of those customs and institutions, including Sufism, syncretism and the veneration of saints, which they see as un- Islamic and possibly tainted with polytheism or superstition (shirk). http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx? aid=3050 [http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3050] Comment: Publishing the views of "White Hindus" is a sure way to confuse and mislead Indian Hindus. This article is typical in presenting a very European view of Islam. It makes no mention that the Islam-Christian confrontation that began during the life of the Prophet and continues till today, has been the single most important political factor that has shaped the Ummah. The article refers to Saudi Arabia as if it were an independent Islamic entity rather than a proxy state created by Britain to outflank the Ottoman Empire. The whole "clash of civilizations" concept is a bid to mobilize Christendom against Islam, and Bush Sr. merely dusted it off to replace the Cold War as the organizing principle of international life. I could go on citing such errors of fact, nuance and judgment, but this should be enough. If Vijayvaani must carry this tripe there should be a warning: "The views of the author are subversively European and Indians are cautioned to treat them with extreme caution." . Page 7 of 12 A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon 23-Dec-2013 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/a-history-of-political-islam-come.html of many ancient shrines illustrative not only of pre-Islamic Arabian culture, but also of the lives of the Prophet and his family. The financial might of the oil rich Gulf monarchy has helped to spread its own rigid version of the Deen all over the world, but nonetheless has not always protected its rulers from condemnation by Islamic scholars who accuse Wahhabis of vandalizing the common heritage of Muslims and making the ummah culturally poorer and more estranged from the rest of mankind. A coalition of ulema from various madhabs, the All India Ulema and Mashaik Board, led by Maulana Syed Muhammed Ashraf Kichhauchchawi has even mounted a nationwide campaign in India to condemn and reject Salafist doctrinal and cultural influence which is resented and feared even in the Gulf region where Ibadite Oman and Yemen and Maliki Bahrain, UAE and Qatar do not accept the Wahhabi dogmas upheld by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The long standing attempt to modernize Islam through involution started by J amaluddin Afghani has hence had some undesirable results, partly because it has not forged a model of government that can enable Muslims to navigate away from the opposite extremes of military dictatorship and political disintegration. In South Asia, the Muslim League and the J amaat have broken up into various factions after becoming junior partners to the hegemonic armed forces in Pakistans polity and failing to build a stable political system. The Leagues call for Islamic unity between all sects of the religion failed to prevent the increasing alienation between the Sunnis and the Shiite, Babi, Bahai and Ahmadiya minorities. On the other hand, more traditional states like the monarchies, including those ruled by descendents of the Prophet such as Morocco and J ordan, have been able to combine rather successfully so far ancient forms of tribal organization with a theocratic socio-political philosophy which rejects social innovations viewed as incompatible with the ancestral status quobased on hereditary dynastic power supervised by the ulema. As the Muslim League seeks to and as the Turkish Page 8 of 12 A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon 23-Dec-2013 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/a-history-of-political-islam-come.html AKP also does, those countries espouse social conservatism with economic liberalism, both of which are characteristic of Muslim societies. One factor that emerges from the study of these contemporary societies is that none has been able or willing to embrace the democratic ideology in its totality as it clearly stands in contradiction to the essentially platonic principle of Gods rule (hukm) through the verdicts of the learned who are to advise the leader and his appointed lieutenants (walis) and ministers (wazirs). In Islamic political doctrine there is room for popular debate and participation through an assembly (shura or majlis) but it is only consultative, in keeping with the original meaning of the word parliament or the Russian duma whose members could express their views and voice suggestions but had no sovereign decisional or legislative power. Such a theory of government is at the core of the constitutions of most Muslim nations, from Morocco to Afghanistan. There can be no western-style democracy if all citizens must subscribe to Islams extensive and detailed instructions for daily life and if unanimity of the religious scholars is required, instead of popular majority in elections, to make a decision legitimate. Indeed, for an orthodox Muslim simple popular majority decisions have no legitimacy if they are go against the Divine Law articulated as Shariah, Fiqh, Qanun and Kalam. Likewise, human freedom is an enduring matter of debate among theologians and jurists, some of whom uphold Jabr (predestination) which sees all actions as emanating from the will of God whereas others emphasize Qadr: human free will that can go against the divine commands but has to pay the price. Freedom, individual or collective, cannot be seen as total, in the western agnostic sense, if Gods writ as enshrined in the Holy Book, dictates all behaviour and if its transgression is severely punished by society. There is also a problem with the ambiguous notion of Taklif whereby an evil deed or action may find casuistic justification if it is deemed to be willed by God for the sake of a greater good. Too many use that to justify the Page 9 of 12 A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon 23-Dec-2013 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/a-history-of-political-islam-come.html ruthless or terrorist use of violence, even against personally innocent victims, with the excuse of pursuing a higher goal i.e. the triumph of the true faith. Reformers of Muslim nations, however influenced by modern European ideas they may have been, were aware of that reality and most of them were allergic to liberal parliamentary democracy but even more so to Communist egalitarian materialism. The first president of the worlds most populous Muslim society, Mohammed Soekarno promoted guided democracy which is practiced in Indonesia even today. Influential, religiously inspired contemporary statesmen and political thinkers such as the late Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur), Mohammed Khatami, Hassan al Turabi, Fethullah Gulen and Chandra Muzaffar are generally skeptical about the desirability or applicability of multi-party democracy, even in non-Islamic societies. Unsurprisingly, Iran has perhaps been the most successful in building a system of governance in keeping with its own brand of Islam that allows room for a degree of democracy, probably due to the early split between religion and state pointed out earlier. In the Arab sphere, apart from the oil rich, sparsely populated kingdoms, Morocco has so far been a relatively successful, stable nation that is currently governed by an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood under the aegis of a theocratic monarch. Economic prosperity and stability is also evident in the minority communities that are ruled by their hereditary traditional leaders, such as the Ibadites of Southern Arabia and East Africa, the Ismailis of the Aga Khan, the Ahmadiyas, the African Muridis and others which share many features of the Sufi orders in their internal hierarchies. Near the other extremity of the Muslim space, multi-ethnic and multi-religious Malaysia and Indonesia have managed hitherto to contain tensions between their composite national identities and a resurgent Islamic militancy in their confessional majority. In the turbulent sea of fractious Sunni politics that often leads to anarchy, absent an iron-fisted potentate, those nations and groups appear as islands of stability and wellbeing. Indeed, the Page 10 of 12 A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon 23-Dec-2013 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/a-history-of-political-islam-come.html 1300 million Muslims of the world are probably too diverse and spread out to accept a unified leadership and hence the dream of a globally integrated Ummah appears even more distant than it did in 1924 when Ataturk abolished the Osmanli khalifate. In 2013, an ad hoc coalition between secular forces in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Algeria, Shiite movements led by Iran, and the BRICS countries spearheaded by Russia and China, stopped the seemingly irresistible onslaught of radical Sunni Islamist forces, not so covertly supported by the NATO countries and Israel which seem to have seen some benefit in the destabilization of the entire North African-West Asian region. The AKP government in Turkey finds itself weakened and in difficulty because of the defeat of its allies, as it actively supported both the Muslim Brotherhood and many Salafist Sunni rebel groups in Libya, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon in furtherance of a neo-ottoman agenda that now appears rather short-sighted and unrealistic. Prime Minister Erdogans government is also faced with a domestic backlash against its creeping attempts to introduce stricter Islamic laws and rules of conduct in a society that has become largely secular and westernised, at least in urban areas. Although tiny Wahhabi Qatar has been jolted by the political blowback of its policies to support Takfiri armed groups as well as the Muslim Brotherhood all over Asia and Africa, and has had to take a low profile since its ambitious Amir was forced to abdicate in favour of his son, Saudi Arabia continues to foster and fund Salafist militancy, as it is wont to, in Syria, Iraq and North Africa. But on the other hand, it has helped the Egyptian army and the more secular part of the population to overthrow the Islamic Brotherhoods government. Saudi Arabia and its GCC confederates are torn between their ideological commitment to theocratic traditional forms of governance and their fear of the very fundamentalists who would like to replace their ruling clans with their own warlords. Salafists have not admitted defeat and the failure of the Brotherhood to take over various states through elections and other democratic methods imported from the West has only Page 11 of 12 A history of political Islam -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon 23-Dec-2013 http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/a-history-of-political-islam-come.html comforted the hardliners in their conviction that only war and uncompromising enforcement of their radical socio-political agenda can bring them victory. The vast majority of Muslims do not live under strictly Islamic regimes and are unwilling to submit to the strictures and sanctions that such reactionary dispensations would enforce. Their attempt to combine the Mutazilite call for the rule of reason with the Salafist demand for religious purity and ideological rigidity doomed many Muslim reformers of the last two centuries to failure. Seeking inspiration from mystical philosophers like Al Farabi, Ibn Arabi and Ibn Sina and from pragmatic and enlightened more modern thinkers such as Emir Abdel Kadir of Algeria, Maulana Azad and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan of India and Gus Dur of Indonesia, the Ummah must find a way of retaining its faith while cultivating a pluralistic modus vivendi that as the prophet called for, rejoices in diversity: Ikhtilaf ummati rahma. (Concluded) (Concluded) http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx? Posted 7 hours ago by Srinivasan Kalyanaraman
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