The second or the third Christian millennium has no particular significance in Islam or Islamic history. The 15th Islamic century began in 1401 AH (1978 AD) and in 1968, if counted from the year of the first revelation. In Islamic history, the first millennium began in 1578 AD when the Ottoman, the Safavids and the Mughals were dominant in the heartland of the Islamic World, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The Caliphate never recovered from the Mongol invasion and the sack of Baghdad in early 13th century. The Fatimid caliphate degenerated into a mockery and the Caliphate was transferred to the Ottomans in dubious circumstances, to be abolished by Kemalist Turkey in 1924.
During the last 400 years, the Islamic World has been in decay - politically, economically, technologically, culturally and even socially. Muslim land far to the West; Spain, had already been gradually lost to Islam. Economically, the West took over the trade routes. Militarily, the West surged past Islam, using new technologies. The Ottoman reeled under the counter-attacks by Russia and the European powers. Iran, never occupied, became a shadow of its old self. In 1757, the Battle of Palassy sealed the fate of the Mughal Empire, already in shambles and under attack by the Marathas, the Sikhs and the Jats.
Islamic seats of learning which had remained prisoners of the past, failed to change with the times and decayed. The quest of knowledge and the scientific spirit was lost and the Muslim world was enveloped by the darkness of ignorance and illiteracy.
But numerically Islam continued to expand in Black Africa, in Central Asia, in S.E. Asia .!
In the meantime, the world had entered the era of territorial nationalism and nation-states. Today, there are over 60 States with Muslim majority, though not one can be said to be an Islamic state. During the last 50 years, nearly 40 new Muslim majority states have joined the international community. The number of Muslims is at an all time high, over 1000 millions in a world population of roughly 6000. Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh among them have about 500 million Muslims. The Arab states, almost 90% Muslim, have just' over 100 million. Large concentrations exist in Central Asia, China and West Africa. There are large pockets of Muslims, largely immigrant, in Western Europe, the USA and Australia.
And yet, the World of Islam is politically unstable, militarily spineless, economically stagnant, educationally backward and technologically primitive and socially obscurantist and decadent. In the field of academic scholarship, Muslims are hardly visible. In the field of science, Muslims are nowhere in the picture. In the field of technology, Muslims are rarely to be seen.
But with the world ringing with competitive 'claims about the coming millennium and with 'prophesies' about the twenty-first century, in particular, how can the Muslims take a back seat and remain silent?
The world Muslim community, the Ummah, is thus claiming the next century as the Century of Islam. The spokesmen are not quite explicit on the nature and content of the claim. But it does reflect the universal aspiration -and expectation - that in the coming century, the Muslim world shall be better off than it has been in the twentieth century.
But behind this aspiration and expectation, there are some palpable desires and hopes. Perhaps some people think that the Muslims who constitute today roughly 20% of the world's population shall form a majority of the global population before the 21st century closes. Some think that 60 odd Muslim majority states shall be unified under a neo-Khilafat, recreate an Islamic empire which shall be powerful enough to protect the rights of Muslims living in the rest of the world as minority groups. Some think that this mighty force of resurgent Islam shall write new chapters of Islamic glory and establish its dominance over the non-Muslim states and shape the world order in accordance with Islamic principles. Some aspire that the next century will see an Islamic renaissance, not only in theology and philosophy, literature and arts but in science and technology which, with Muslim scientists and technologists working at the frontiers of knowledge, expand Man's intellectual horizons and his capacity to exploit the renewable and non-renewable natural resources at his command as Allah's Vice-Regent on Earth.
To live is to aspire but aspiration can also be, like dreams, divorced from reality - a phantasy beyond the realm of the possible. Indeed to pursue such dreams and phantasies would be like chasing a mirage in a desert or ploughing in the ocean.
Today, the Muslim mind tends to ignore the sordid reality of political dependence, economic backwardness and social decay. Most of the Muslim States are at the bottom of the development scale. Most Muslim communities, with a minority status in non-Muslim countries, replicate the international situation at the national level.
On the other hand, the Muslim mind continues to revel in the recall of past glories and identifies itself with the Umayyads and the Abbasids, the Fatimids and the Ottomans, the Moghul India, the Safavi Iran and the Arab Andalus. It constantly recalls its contribution to science and technology, to arts and literature, to the manifold facets of what came to be known as the Islamic Civilization, in a pitiful effort to forget the sordid present.
Yet a question persists in my mind:
If human beings are indivisible, if they are all members of one family, if Allah, in His mercy, has made them all Khalifatullah-fil-Arz, if all knowledge and information, all science and technology, all discoveries and inventions know no frontiers, if the natural resources, wherever they lie, are the common heritage of all mankind, shouldn't we sing of the glories of Man, Allah's finest creation – rather than of a religious community or a geographical region or a particular culture. No doubt faces have changed is man's march towards the conquest of his physical environment.
Different peoples, call them nations and states if you like, have held the banner of progress in their hand in their turn and led the march for a few steps, till they were replaced by others. The rise and fall of peoples - history - cannot be explained except as an unfolding or manifestation of the Divine Will which we may not be able to discern. How people emerge into history, lead humanity for a while and disappear into oblivion is a mystery. No people have a monopoly of divine pleasure for all times. At one time, the Muslim people were in the forefront of knowledge and technology. Today, the world is in the hands of the West.
So the right approach for a member of the human race is to aspire for a glorious future for Man, not as nations or States or peoples or religious or linguistic or racial or ethnic groups but as a collectivity which has been favoured with intelligence and will and promised knowledge and assured mastery over Nature.
But then another question gnaws my mind. But humans are not equal and the disparities, measured by any political, economic, educational, social parameter, are so wide that together they make sheer nonsense of our loud and persistent invocation of 'equality of man' or of 'human dignity' or of 'human rights'!
Indeed, those very disparities provide the answer to the question what should be the common objective of mankind in the coming century.
The disparities have largely arisen because when human labour and technology, capital and enterprise are applied to transform the resources into material goods for trade and consumption, the terms of exchange - the rules of the game -determine who shall be rich and who shall be poor. These terms of exchange are in turn determined by the world order dominated by the rich and the rich and the powerful in poor states.
Whatever the resistance, the objective must be the reduction of disparity and equitable distribution of income, goods and services, so that every member of the human race, can live a life (and die a death) of dignity which is his due as a human being, so that every child who is born, white, yellow, brown or black, enjoys equal opportunity to realize his potential like the equal number of brain cells and of limbs that he has been born with, so that everyone has equal access to education and health, to clothing and shelter, to job and environment. The world is slowly but inexorably moving in this direction. At the turn of the century, we can all take a vow to accelerate this movement towards Equality and Justice.
And this leads us to the role that all humanity cutting across the national frontiers and all communities within the national frontiers can play. Each strand of communication, sympathy and action, horizontal or vertical, will reinforce the other and can set in motion a 'competition' among communities and among States and among regions and among civilizations to reduce the disparity. Convergent action within each group will, in effect, reduce disparities between the communities, the States and the Civilizations.
Islam as I understand it, is a call for piety, not power. Piety (Taqwa') entails austerity to a point, but it also entails 'Ihsan' towards others, including the neighbour. Islam stands on the principle of ultimate accountability for one's actions on earth. Except for the few who may have to account also for the use of power they held over other human beings, everyone shall have to account for his individual acts. Thus, since the measure of 'Karama' (greatness) is 'Taqwa', the Muslims of the world should focus on their own backwardness and internal disparities. In Muslim States they should use state power to establish a regime of Equality and Justice in keeping with the essential message of Islam. Even in States in which they form a minority, the Muslims should gird up their loins, as well as strive for empowerment and participation, through the exercise of their democratic rights, to obtain a fair and equitable share of the national resources, the fruits of development schemes and the benefits of welfare programmes for themselves and other deprived groups. They can thus reduce the disproportionate burden of illiteracy and disease, of squalor and deprivation, of frustration and despondency that they bear.
But the objective must be clearly defined so as not to pour oil over the raging fires of Islamophobia. Muslims, internationally and nationally, should shout, as often as they can, from the rooftops that they do not aspire to convert the world to Islam or to achieve world supremacy and national dominance, that they aspire, to nothing more nothing less, than a fair share of the international and the national cake and to live in freedom and dignity like any other human group. To achieve not just tolerance but acceptance, whatever their position in life or their profession or vocation, the Muslims have to live their life in accordance with the Islamic model and achieve excellence and command esteem.
On their part, therefore, the Muslims have to come to terms with multi-religious, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic world, with States in which they do not command power, with a world in which they are not dominant. They have to remove the psychological block, the mental reserve, the false dichotomy between Deen and Duniya, between Religion and Knowledge and between Islam and 'modernization'. Through Ijtihad, through reinterpretation, through accommodation, through adopting the middle path, through avoidance of extremes, they have to imbibe the best elements of all civilizations and cultures, which are not repugnant to Islam, through integration (not. assimilation) with other social groups in their states. They have to accept and absorb the principle of Democracy, Social Justice, Secularism, Gender Equality, Human Rights and Minorities Rights.
And thus enrich their own lives, upgrade their communities, elevate their countries and change the human condition.
This should be the common quest of the people of all religions, races, languages and regions and of all communities and nations.
New Delhi,
1" June, 1999
