Immoderate Muslims
M.A. Niazi analyzes the "ferment is in the Muslim world".

September 11 has forced massive soul-searching on most of the world. While the West is asking itself important questions about its behaviour towards the rest of the world, the main ferment is in the Muslim world, and a number of inchoate and perhaps incipient trends and sentiments have now come to the fore.

However, one of the least remarked-upon phenomena is the way the Muslim world is being defined, leaving Islam as perhaps the only major world religion which is being obliged to categorise its adherents according to standards set by others. The whole concept of 'moderate' Muslims versus 'extremist' or 'fundamentalist' Muslims, and an intriguing new term, 'Islamists', is essentially of Western origin, and more reflects the political and economic interests of the West, rather than the internal divisions of the Muslims themselves.

Underlying this approach is a fundamental development in Christian theology over the last century, only widely noticed recently, which is creating the cognitive dissonance between Muslims and Christians that has led to much of the discourse of a clash of civilisations.

Put baldly, Muslims are the only followers of a major religion who still believe in Hell. Christians still have Hell 'on the books', so to speak, but it is an increasingly de-emphasised concept, even among theologians and sects which still uphold its existence.

Even among them, Hell has lost its vividity, and after about 1900 years of threatening disbelievers and backsliders with torment, mainstream Christianity now stresses the Grace of God.

This has had serious consequences on relations with Islam. Up to about 100 years ago, a believing Christian 'knew' non-Christians would rot in Hell. However, with the decline of the concept of Hell itself, it becomes increasingly difficult to see how non-Christians are going to be punished for not accepting Christ as the Saviour.

However, Muslims still believe non-Muslims will suffer eternal torment. One reason for the development in Christian theology is that, for a variety of reasons which cannot be discussed adequately here, Western values lost their Christian moorings, and ethics became independent of religious sanction. However, a vivid sense of divine reward and punishment remains the basis of Muslim ethical systems, even among Muslims who would hardly be called devout. This leads to an interesting conclusion: if there is a clash, it is on the part of the Muslims. In a way, the clash started with the emergence of Islam, and its simultaneous political conflict with Persian Zoroastrianism and Byzntine Christianity. The former was more or less wiped out, a modus vivendi evolved with the second. Muslim and Christian states learned to live with each other as neighbours, and to administer populations of other religions, while Muslim and Christian communities learned to live under the other's rule. These relations were never comfortable, but centuries of experience gave them familiarity.

That modus vivendi was disturbed by three factors in the last two centuries: the unprecedented intrusion of the West into Muslim lands, the one-sidedness of the intrusion; and finally the Western declining any longer to give battle. An early version of the new paradigm was Macaulay's plan for educating Indians: the purpose was no longer religious conversion, once all-important, as it involved eternal salvation and damnation. The purpose became cultural conversion, to eradicating the impact of religion on the individual. To an extent, this flowed out of the solution to the Catholic-Protestant conflict, in which both became votaries of separate nationalisms.

Why could that success not be translated to colonial subjects?

Christianity is no longer a political commonality among Western nations. Yet Islam remains a political commonality among Muslim nations. Significantly, the global Christian organisation is the World Council of Churches (which the Roman Catholic Church has not joined), the Muslim parallel is the OIC. The WCC allows even Christians from non-Christian states to participate; the OIC only allows full membership to Muslim-majority states. this brings up another interesting phenomenon. The 'clash of civilisations', if any, is intra-Muslim, rather than Christian-Muslim, or Western-Muslim. Within the Muslims of the world, there is a strong body of opinion which supports the Western view, and feels that, just as has happened with Christianity, religion must be relegated to the background, as a cultural artifact, which buttresses but does not determine, national and cultural identity, but which is not a prime determinant of behaviour.

This particular school would welcome US Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin's observance of the Ramadan fast as a neat inter-cultural acknowledgement of a quaint custom. The more literalist, traditionalist, devout, extremist, Muslims would (rather ungraciously) view it as needless hunger and thirst by Ms Chamberlin, which completely misses the point of fasting, which is to please Allah.

There is no neat categorisation of Muslims. Since there is no established authority among them, since the clergy are scholars rather than priests, the Ummah covers a pretty freewheeling bunch. Even the millennium-old Shia-Sunni, or even intra-Sunni, divides, are no guideline in this new debate, since the modernist-traditionalist divide (or rather spectrum) cuts across sects. Both modernist and traditionalist are radical; for the traditionalists are not conservatives, for they propose substantial change, and can only loosely be called reactionaries, so far back in history have they fixed their reference points. However, oversimplifying for the sake of argument, the modernist-traditionalist debate runs into basic difficulties.

The modernists apply an essentially Western critique of Islam, and would mould it into a kind of Christianity. The traditionalists apply the weight of about eight centuries of lively intellectual development (about 700 AD-1500 AD) to defending their positions. Both suffer from serious flaws. The modernist attempt to justify Western values as Islamic, leads to convolutions that stretch what are usually reasonably clear textual injunctions. Islam differs from Christianity in having comparatively a purer text, with clearer provenance. This allows modernists little room for manoeuvre unless they take an agnostic or atheistic position, which is a different ball game. The traditionalists, on the other hand, in their myriad manifestations and intensities, all suffer the handicap that the process of interpretation in interaction with evolving societies, that gives them their supplementary texts; that process virtually ceased about four centuries ago. Reappraisal was only forced by modernist critiques.

Thus the traditionalists sometimes get as convoluted, in a different direction. The best examples are provided by the Taliban: their edict on hijab, horrendous as it might be to modern sensibilities, is in line with traditional thinking. But the destruction of the Bamian Buddhas, though attributed to the tradition, was not.

Most Muslim societies have tried to tread a middle path, carrying along both the modernist and traditionalist elements. There is great variation between Ataturk and Mullah Omar. There is huge diversity within the Ummah (incidentally, an attribute approved of by most traditonal texts, yet something today's traditionalists de-emphasise).

That diversity cannot be totally eliminated. There will always be modernisers and traditionalists. That said, a node of choice seems to have arrived. Either the bulk must swing towards the modernists, and adopt wholeheartedly the categorisations imposed on Islam by the West, or the traditionalists will proliferate.

Meanwhile, what does the West do while over a billion people debate their future? It can either interfere, as it is doing in Afghanistan, and tilt the balance towards 'extremism', or it can sit back and be subjected to attacks like September 11. More constructively, it should understand the essence of the difference, and accept it.

If that is done, it must also understand that developing a more equitable world will serve two purposes. It strengthens the cause of the modernists, who have for over a century insisted that this would yield material benefits. And it weakens the appeal of the traditionalists: the concept of divine reward and punishment in the Afterlife attracts those most oppressed in this life. It provides redressal for oppression suffered on Earth, as well as guarantees punishment of the earthly oppressors.

That is the disadvantage the West suffers, if it applies too much force. Those suffering it cannot be cowed into mental submission, because they sincerely believe they will be compensated in the next world. After all, Christianity itself started as a movement of those oppressed by Rome, of slaves, the poor, non-citizen subjects and even middle- and upper-class women. It was not just a symbol of resistance, but also provided hope for individuals who could find none on earth.

The West should ensure that traditionalist Islam is not forced to become just such a vehicle for the oppressed.