Review by Siddhartha Dubey in the Sunday Weekly, Calcutta, 8-14 July, 1990

Arun Shourie, editor of the Indian Express, sets out to analyse the crucial political issue of conflict between religious communities in India.

In Shourie's world-view, all Muslims, including today's minority Indian Muslims, are driven by the fundamentals of hate and bigotry that he says are written as absolute truth in the Koran. This nightmare vision of an "evil empire" Islam is shared by many in India and the West. Shourie writes, "If the traditions or doctrines of a religious prescribe duties that are not compatible with the principles of a secular state—for instance, if our religion ordains, as Islam does, that we must either convert the one who adheres to some other religion or slay him—those duties must be jettisoned and not the principles of a secular state." Shourie pursues this argument through 462 interminable pages of poor prose.

But being an eminent editor and winner of innumerable awards for defending the freedom of the Indian press and public, Shourie must disguise his bigotry with words that speak of liberalism. So, Shourie makes much of his secular credentials. He argues that non-Muslims must be free to criticise and reform Islam and non-Hindus to reform Hinduism. He appeals to the most hallowed tenets of the freedom of expression. "The moral is clear," writes Shourie. "In examining a religious text or the life and teaching of a religious leader, we must examine the proposition per se, the deed per se. That the proposition is urged in the Koran rather than the Bible, that the deed is of Krishna rather than of Moses, must make no difference to our assessment of it Correspondingly, when we come across a critique of a religious text. We must weigh it on its own. That a Hindu or a Muslim has written it must make no difference to our assessment of it." Shourie is literate enough to know how to make all the right noises.

But behind the veneer of high-minded reform, Shourie's true intent remains glorifying Hinduism which for him is more "humanist" and "secular" than all other religions and castigating fanatical religions that pose a threat to Hindu India. At one point Shourie writes, extraordinarily, "The example to follow is that of Buddha and Jesus, not of Elisha and Muhammad"

Thankfully, there are such writers as Asghar Ali Engineer and Rafiq Zakaria to counter the easy prejudices and stereotypes regurgitated by Shourie and his like. Zakaria's The Struggle Within Islam is masterful portrayal of Islam as a complex religion used for divergent ends in its 14 centuries of history by political and religious leaders. A major strength of Zakaria's work is that he shows well that religiosity is not always opposed to secular politics. The communal problem is the misuse of religions in politics, and this is as often done by nonbelievers as by those labelled religious fundamentalists.

Thus, Zakaria, a lawyer and politician, details how influential Indian Muslim theologians opposed Jinnah's "two-nation" theory in pre-partition days. Zakaria writes of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Hind, the premier organisation of Muslim divines, that "though fundamentalist in their religious outlook, they were secular in political affairs. They cooperated with secular Muslims and opposed their denigrators". In contrast, Zakaria notes that secularists "have, in many cases, exploited Islam for political gain. The outstanding example of this school is Jinnah, a Shi'ite, who never followed the rites of Islam, but whipped up a religious frenzy among Indian Muslims for a separate homeland of their own."

Like all other religions, Islam has been used by rulers to validate their rule. Zakaria writes, "There is no gainsaying the fact that the whole basis of Islam is democratic; in it kings and dictators do not fit in. Unfortunately, neither the classical nor the modern jurists, by and large, have done anything to enforce it. On the contrary, quite often the democratic principle has been overthrown and even the theologians have quietly complied with the dictates of the ruler And the Ulama have rarely hesitated to accord legitimacy to kings and dictators.

The legitimacy comes at a price. Zakaria's analysis of Pakistan... politics shows that interference by religious leaders is particularly strong when a weak political leader asks for legitimacy. According to Zakaria, Pakistan's political leaders were essentially secular and sidetracked the demands of the fundamentalists right uptil Zulfikar Ali Bhutto found his rule threatened in the mid-Seventies. "Taking advantage of the popular unrest, the fundamentalists demanded full Islamisation," writes Zakaria. "In desperation, Bhutto gave in. He declared Friday instead of Sunday a holiday, prohibited the imbibing of liquor, banned cabarets."

Zakaria's book is essential reading for those who wish to get beyond the easy prejudices and stereotypes. Zakaria's book is about Islam and the situation of Muslims across the world.