Both
Saeed Naqvi's article, "A Sufi message from a Pakistani President"
(The Hindu, April 9, 2012) and Ayesha Siddiqa's response, "The Road from Ajmer leadsnowhere" (The Hindu, April 17, 2012) capture the essence of the question asked both
within and outside Islam: what went wrong with the Muslim world? Both the
writers apparently favour an alternative narrative in the religion that will challenge
its puritanical Deobandi or Wahabi versions equipped with ideological armaments
capable of undermining even the search for such an alternative to ensure
peaceful co-existence across the globe. While Mr. Naqvi finds the message of
Sufism 'the only path to tread' to end discord spawned by puritanical Islam,
Ms. Siddiqa is sceptical of Sufism's 'potency' to offer an intellectual
challenge to radicals or militants in the religion.
The visit
of Pakistan President Asif Sardari to Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti's mausoleum at
Ajmer on April 8, 2012 certainly had some symbolism in the backdrop of the bounty announced by
the United States on Hafiz Saeed, the Islamist leader in Pakistan. But he is
not the first Pakistani head of state or government to visit the shrine. Probably
he will not be the last. The shrine perhaps owes its fame to the Mughal
patronage after Emperor Akbar walked barefoot all the way from Agra to Ajmer to
fulfill his vow that he would walk on foot to the shrine if a son was born to
him. In the folklore of popular faith in the subcontinent, the 12 th century
Sufi saint is known for his miracles. Every one of those who visit there does
so with a prayer and a desire. Islamism that entertains the establishment of a
global Islamic community, however, hardly gives much import to the idea of fulfillment
of personal desires of the faithful.
Khwaja
Moinuddin Chishti was not the first Sufi saint to visit India. No shrine is
known to have been built anywhere in the world for the Persian mystic, Mansur
al Hallaj, who was the first Sufi to visit India and toured extensively in the
subcontinent. Hallaj who traversed the frontiers of mystical experience and
equated himself with truth by declaring "I am the Truth" was cut into
pieces in Bagdhad in 922. Blasphemy is serious in Islam, a fact that in recent
times was exemplified by the assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer for
his staunch opposition to blasphemy laws in Pakistan.
Holy men
such as the khwaja might be successful in spreading Islam among the
people in the subcontinent in the past. That heritage is still deep-rooted in
the region. History has proved that the rigid orthodoxy can live side by side
with mysticism at least in this part of the world. If Sufism today is more a
heritage, radical political Islam inspired by the Wahabi or Salafi ideology is a
contemporary reality posing a formidable challenge to what we understand as
modern values.
Between the optimism of Mr. Naqvi and the scepticism of Ms. Siddiqa lies the road that neither of them is prepared to acknowledge: the road of
reason. That road is as old as the parallel road trodden by the Muslim mystics in
the very early periods of Islam's history. No doubt, the question of blasphemy
was at the very heart of the mainstream discourse in the Islamic societies
during those early centuries when they dealt with the heresies of the mystics
and the 'rationalising heresies' of Muslim philosophers, who introduced Greek
philosophical ideas to question religious dogmas of their times and thus opened
the gates to philosophical inquiry, rationalism and scepticism. That gate
remained open till it was closed by mid-thirteenth century in the Islamic
world.
The fruits of the unlocking of the gates of inquiry are all
there to see in the former Christendom as clearly as the consequences of
Islam’s inability to adapt to the modern world and its values. The West with
its liberal democratic traditions and rationalist, secular and scientific
worldview has derived its intellectual energy from Enlightenment, while Islamic
societies with their disdain of democracy, secularism and scientific rationalism
show the dominance of religious orthodoxy that has never tolerated anything
that smacks of the spirit of inquiry.
Many in the West argue that Islam itself is the root cause of
the problems in the Muslim world. That is a debatable argument that will not go
unchallenged. It is also argued that perhaps the relative absence of deep
theological rift within Islam contributed to the religion’s inability to adapt
to the modern world. It is a fact that theological differences between
Catholics and Protestants in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
drove European thinkers and philosophers to re-define the relationship between
religion and politics and that re-definition led to Enlightenment. Hafiz Saeed
and his ilk will thrive in an Islamic society bereft of a milieu that encourages
rational thinking and freedom of inquiry.
The alternative narrative that can compete with the puritanical
religious dogma is there within the history of Islam. Perhaps, the rationalist
tradition in Islam, which gained patronage of some Abbasid Caliphs and
presented reason (aql) as the arbiter in affairs concerning life and
religion, offers some hope. Advocates of puritanical religion abhor reason and promote
acceptance of faith without doubt. The only intellectual tool to challenge the
religious puritanism in Islam and the question of blasphemy that entails it can
be drawn from that rationalist tradition in the early history of Islam and not
the mystical tradition.
The road to religious reform starts from al-Farabi (870-950), whose
treatise Attainment of Happiness tempers Islam’s ambition to establish a
homogenous Islamic state in the inhabited world and urges Muslims to accept the
idea of multiplicity of ‘virtuous religions’. It also starts from ibn Sina
(980-1037) and ibn Rushd (1126-1198) and the other illustrious philosophers. “I
learnt with certainty that it is above all the mystics who walk on the road of
God,” wrote al-Ghazali (1058-1111), often referred to as the greatest Muslim
after Muhammad. Al-Ghazali, who urged the Muslims to reckon the
philosophers as infidels, knew that taking the road of reason is fraught with
dangers. That road is worth traversing today and no sensible person can say
that that road leads nowhere.
