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Islam and the future
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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION Islam and the future Ziauddin Sardar
The tail end of the 20th century brings us right back to its beginning. In terms of power politics we have not so much moved forward as gone back to the future. At the dawn of the 20th century, Russia was on the verge of a breakdown. Japan and (a united) Germany were rising as global powers. China was nursing itself in the aftermath of the Boxer rebellion as it now recovers from the Tiananmen Square massacre. America, unsure of its future, was trying to acquire an empire by sending troops into Cuba, Panama and the Philippines; now, in the twilight years of its final decline, it is trying to sustain its influence by sending troops to South America and the Gulf. So what else has changed in the last 90 years? We are faced not so much with Fukuyama's arrogant and imperialist notion of the 'end of history', ~ but more in the way of Ibn Khaldun, its recycling3
Plus ca change, plus c'est la m~me chose. But there is a real difference between the beginning of the 20th century and the end of the millennium: that difference is Islam. At the beginning of the 20th century, Islam--colonized, defeated, stagnant --could easily have been written off from history and the future. At the dawn of the 21st century, Islam--resurgent, confid_ent, 'militant', 'fundamentalist', very much alive--is poised to become a global force. Whether it is seen as a force for liberation or as an authoritarian step back to the Middle Ages, Islam cannot be ignored. From the outside, that is from the perspective of the Occident, only a certain variety--the most overt, vocal
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and aggressive---of the whole diverse array of Islamic revivalism appears to be visible. But within the shell of this virtual image, Muslim civilization has been reconstructing itself. This process of reconstruction, painful and piecemeal, incorporates intellectual, cultural, economic and political aspects. It is a process which will continue well into the next century; and it will have, as it already has had, its setbacks as well as its successes. This special issue of Futures sets out to provide an inside view of how Islam is reconstructing itself as a contemporary worldview and civilization. The holistic and the reductive From the outset it is important to appreciate both the nature of Islam and its contemporary manifestations. Islam is a religion, culture, tradition and civilization all at once; but to see it as any one of these single components is to miss the whole picture. Islam is best appreciated as a wordview: as a way of looking at and shaping the world; as a system of knowing, being and doing. The literal meaning of Islam is submission and peace. To be a Muslim is to submit voluntarily to the will of One, All Knowing, All Powerful, Merciful and Beneficient God and to seek peace on the basis of this submission. This peace is sought within a parameter of objective and eternal concepts and values that are furnished by the Qur'an and the Sunnah (sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad) and that shape the worldview of Islam. The fundamental concept of the Islamic worldview is tawheed, which is normally translated as 'the Unity of
224 Editor's Introduction
God', but which by extension also signifies the unity of humankind and the unity of people and nature. Within this all-embracing framework of unity the creation is a trust from God, and men and w o m e n - - w h o are all equal in the sight of God whatever their colour or creed--are khalifa or trustees of God. Humankind is responsible for this trust, and each individual will be held accountable for his or her action in the akhira (the Hereafter). The responsibilities of the trusteeship are fulfilled on the basis of two other fundamental Islamic concepts: ilm (distributive knowledge) and adl (social justice). The thought and actions of the khalifa are based not on blind faith but on knowledge; and the sole function of all the ideas and activities of the trustee are to promote allround justice. Both ilm and adl are sought on the basis of ijma (consensus), shura (consultation and participation) and istislah (public interest). Within this simple but integrated ethical framework, all ways of knowing, being and doing are halal (praiseworthy); outside this ethical circumference, where there is danger, lies the haram (blameworthy) territory. The challenge for any Muslim people is to map out the halal territory most suitable for their historic epoch. The individuals who voluntarily accept the challenge and undertake to work for this goal, On the basis of the above conceptual and value matrix, are bound together in a community, the ummah.
Reductive interpretation I have, of course, presented a holistic picture of the Islamic worldview. But contemporary Muslims seek a very reductive interpretation and implementation of Islam. There are a number of historic reasons for this. The Muslim understanding of the Islamic worldview has been frozen in history; during its long decline and eventual colonization, the Muslim civilization lost its capability of ijtihad, or the capacity for 'reasoned struggle' to develop fresh appreciations and interpretations of the fundamental sources. Colonization produced further ossification where obscurantist traditionalism came to be seen as the sole protection from the encroachment of
the West. Finally, 'development' and accompanied westernization systematically stripped the holistic, ethical layers from Muslim society leaving the fragmented shell of 'minimal Islam'. Thus, in the contemporary world Islam manifests itself in a number of fractured and fragmented, reductive ways. What we have is a whole array of approaches to Islam, all incorporating a selection of original teachings and elements of truths. Amongst this array are those who see Islam simply as a private faith; those who are committed to various traditions within the religion--the historic trend of literal interpretation of the sources of Islam (the Qur'an and the Sunnah), the equally old and established trend of the mystical interpretations of fundamental sources (which leads to a variety of Sufism), a number of ossified juristic traditions; and even those who are commited to the political differences arising from various interpretations (the Sunni-Shia divide). By the very nature of their faith, Muslims are required both to engage with the world and to change it. Thus, each variety of Islamic commitment leads to its own particular way of changing the world: from the conventional 'preaching' to cultural activism to overt political action to the ideological quest for a utopian state. And each action, each thought, is justified by one's most favoured textual interpretation or tradition. The process of reconstruction is a means to heal these fractures and to move forward on the basis of an integrated, holistic understanding of Islam. It is an effort to move beyond an ossified traditionalism, beyond parochial interpretations, towards a confident and culturally authentic reconstruction of a contemporary Muslim civilization. It is an effort to rethink and rework the Islamic paradigm from the first principles, the basic conceptual and ethical teachings of the Qur'an and the Sunnah, so that Muslim societies can engage with contemporary reality in a truly Islamic manner. The objectives of this civilizational project is to produce a fresh, contemporary way of knowing, doing and being that draws its sustenance from the ethical precepts of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. It is an exercise in adjusting to
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Editor's Introduction
change within an eternal, immutable framework of ideas, concepts, values and ethical principles. This is a formidable, multigenerational task--but it is a long overdue task that is slowly, but constantly, gaining ground and attracting the intellectual and physical energies of thinkers, academics, professionals and activists throughout the international Muslim community, the ummah. Parameters of reconstruction
The intellectual cornerstone of the process aiming to reconstruct a contemporary Muslim civilization is the growing discourse on 'lslamization of knowledge'. In 'Rethinking knowledge: "lslamization" and the future', Merryl Wyn Davies argues that 'this growing discourse is a search for the recovery of the Islamic paradigm as the basis for changing the reality of Muslim existence in the modern world and thus creating a distinct and distinctively different future for Muslim civilization'. This discourse, despite some of its unsavoury political manifestations in Pakistan, Sudan and other Muslim countries, is not about a retreat from modernity or a return to history. It is a debate about 'how to ask questions, about what are appropriate questions and how to recognize appropriate answers'. It is a debate at the centre of which lies the idea of knowledge. Davies discusses two main approaches to the Islamization of knowledge--the institutional and the concep t u a l - a n d illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of both by using the single example of the evolution of Islamic banks. She emphasizes that the discourse is developing within three parameters: holism, recognition of uncertainty and complexity, and an acknowledgement of ignorance. The intellectually bold and formidable enterprise of 'lslamization of knowledge', which emerged from the realization that both modernism and traditionalism have utterly failed Muslim societies and which is now into its second decade, has already produced certain notable dividends. A number of new disciplines are being forged, at least one has gained a firm foothold in universities through-
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out the Muslim world, and still others have learned journals devoted entirely to their exploration. One of the successes of the 'lslamization' project has been the emergence of the disciplines and institutions of Islamic economics. The idea and ideal behind Islamic economics is not one-dimensional growth, or development, but a societal transformation that addresses four basic needs of Muslim communities: justice, social welfare, sustainability and economic activity based on the spirit and ideals of Islam. As Muhammad Akram Khan points out in his article on 'The future of Islamic economics', although the principles (total absence of interest, riba; social welfare based on obligatory poor tax, zakah, to name just two) and institutions of Islamic economics, such as Islamic banks, as well as its theoretical structure are in the embryonic phase of evolution, they are already having an impact both on Muslim societies and at the global level. The new discipline has produced a vast body of literature and Khan provides an outline of its emerging theoretical structure and describes its institutional make-up. With the help of examples, he illustrates how an Islamic economy would tackle unemployment, inflation and public debt and explains how the western notion of development is reformulated in an Islamic framework. Although Khan provides a rosy picture of Islamic economics, both its theory and practice have come under severe criticism. In particular, the notion of Islamic banks (which now operate in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan, as well as in Europe) has been widely criticized, not least by Davies in this issue of Futures, for not being fully thought through. 3 It is constructive criticism of this nature which will further refine both the ideas and practices of Islamic economics. There is, however, a wide consensus among Muslim economists on the basic structure of Islamic economics. This is not the case for Islamic science. The debate on Islamic science, which has more recent origins than Islamic economics, is more wide-ranging, with different positions, some totally naive, being deeply entrenched. Jerome Ravetz 4 has over the last decade
226 Editor's Introduction
participated in and contributed to numerous seminars and conferences on Islamic science as an external observer and critic. In 'Prospects for an Islamic science' he identifies three different positions on Islamic science: the apologetic stance which 'attempts to show that the sacred, timeless truths of religion are actually not contradicted by the discoveries of science', the tendency to embrace science in the name of religion, and the attempts to discover a characteristically Islamic style of science. He leans towards the last position--which attempts to base the policy, methodology and practice of science on the basic ethical and value concepts of Islam--as the most viable option. But he warns that it 'runs against the tide of both conventional modernism and conventional traditionalism', and as such it will take a few decades before 'it can make an impact in terms of power and ordinary practice'. However, for Ravetz the real hope of humanizing science lies in the reemergence of monotheistic ethics to replace a whole variety of polytheistic ideals and practices. The increasing ethical vacuum within science and the 'post-scientific world', he argues, can only be filled by a dynamic monotheistic commitment which 'attempts to resolve from moment to moment the dialectic of God's transcendence and immanence'. It is in its attempt to move scientific enterprise towards 'the essential ethical core of monotheism' that Ravetz sees 'the possibility, indeed the necessity, of an Islamic science of the future'. The end of 'fundamentalism'? The debate on the nature and style of Islamic science, the emergence of Islamic economics as a serious local and global force, and the discourse on Islamization of knowledge are all preliminaries to a genuine, contemporary revival of Islam. In most Muslim societies, the new debates, discourses and institutions coexist with more established traditional and conservative ideational and institutional forces. The hold of the traditional interpretations of Islam on Muslim masses cannot be underestimated. It is the traditional varieties of Islam which, argues All Mazrui in his
article, 'The resurgence of Islam and the decline of communism: what is the connection?', have played an important but unrecognized part in the demise of the cold war era. Mazrui argues that perestroika began not in Moscow but in Afghanistan where a fatal blow was dealt to Soviet expansionist ambitions. The mujahiddin are a synthesis of religious fervour and militant Afghan nationalism; and they 'put up a far greater resistance to Soviet occupation than had the people of Hungary in 1956, or the people of Czechoslovakia in 1968, or the people of Poland at any time since World War II'. Whereas the Afghanistan experience spelled the end of Pax Sovietica, the Iranian revolution led to the humiliation of the USA. While the USSR was humbled, the USA became more arrogant and began to throw US military might around the world. It was, argues Mazrui, 'a combination of a more modest Kremlin and a more arrogant Washington [that] provided the setting for Gorbachev's determination to sue for peace under the second Reagan administration'. If the mujahiddin had won outright in Afghanistan they surely would have established an 'Islamic state'--perhaps a Sunni version of the revolutionary Iranian theocracy. To establish an ideological Islamic state has been the fundamental goal of all contemporary Islamic movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Sudan and Jamaat-e-lslami in Pakistan. But as S. Parvez Manzoor argues powerfully in his article on 'The future of Muslim politics: critique of the "fundamentalist" theory of the Islamic state', all experiments in the establishment of a romantic Islamic state have turned out to be theocratic (Iran) or totalitarian (Pakistan, Sudan) nightmares. What distinguishes 'fundamentalism' from traditional Islam, Manzoor tells us, is that 'the cognitive theory of "state" is "fundamental" to its vision of Islam and represents a paramount fact of its consciousness'. Manzoor argues that this fundamentalist vision of Islam as state introduces radical, not to say heretical, ideas in the holistic worldview of Islam. From a 'totalistic theocentric worldview, a God-centred way of life and thought, of knowledge and action',
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Islam is transformed into a 'totalitarian theocratic world order that submits every human situation to the arbitration of the state'. Manzoor regards the fundamentalist model and strategy, based as it is on a superficial analysis of the history, institutions and ideologies of the modern world, as superfluous and irrelevant to contemporary times: 'it is all cause and no programme'. Despite its enviable resources of will and energy, it will die out in its own uselessness. The fundamentalist discourse of Islamic state not only turns politics into metaphysics, it also allows obscurantism to go unchallenged. As Anwar Jbrahim points out in his article on 'The umrnah and tomorrow's world', it 'sets a false agenda of peripheral issues as the only topics that get serious and sustained attention'. But what concerns Ibrahim most is that this exclusivist outlook 'violates the necessary moral meaning of the concept of urnmah' because it 'causes division and engenders unnecessary conflict' and 'enables some expressions to become Muslim imperialism writ large or writ small'. Classical Muslim discourse, as Manzoor points out, has little to do with state and politics but bears entirely upon the issue of faith and community. It is in the concept of a community bound by faith, the umrnah, that Ibrahim sees the basis for a viable future for the Muslim civilization. The Muslim identity, argues Ibrahim, is not only rooted in Islamic history and tradition, it is also intrinsically connected to the notion of ummah. The idea of the ummah is not simply that Muslims are a community, but how Muslims should become a community in relation to each other, other communities and the natural world. It is manifesting in thought, action and openness a distinctive moral vision that is the raison d'etre of the urnmah. It is an enduring commitment to the dynamism of a constant set of moral concepts and precepts that creates the contours and ultimate configuration of the ummah. Moreover, the ummah is 'not a cultural entity patterned upon the norms of any one dominant group' but 'exists within and is expressed through diverse cultural groups'.
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In moving towards the notion of the urnmah, in expressing unity through diversity, Muslim societies would have to abandon the seriously flawed and dangerously obsolete fundamentalist notion of the Islamic state. Manzoor's uncompromising analysis, Ibrahim's vision of tomorrow's ummah, Mazrui's 'kiss of death' theory (any authoritarian Muslim state that gets the support of the West soon withers away), strongly suggest that modernist autocratic and traditionalist despotic rulers, even where they are sustained by the help of ultraconservative traditional scholars, cannot survive beyond the end of the 20th century. While the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam has tremendous emotional and crowd-pulling power, it cannot produce a contemporary polity --this is the lesson of recent Muslim history. This, however, does not mean that Muslim societies will embrace western-style liberal democracy with open arms. It means that Muslim people will seek new models of participatory and representative governments based on their own worldview. Manzoor suggests that it has to be based on the idea of shura which 'when interpreted properly . . . means that Muslims must evolve their own forms of representative governments'. A considerable amount of work on the contemporary institutionalization of the notion of shura and ijma (the politics of consensus) is now being undertaken by Muslim scholars, s
New composition of the ummah Whatever the nature of emerging representative governments in Muslim societies, the composition of the international Muslim community will change considerably over the next two decades. The end of the cold war is already beginning to have an impact on the Muslim ummah. The war was cold because it froze history in Europe and abandoned the fate of some 150 million Muslims to communism. Whatever the future of perestroika in the USSR and old guard communism in China, Muslims in the Eastern bloc are ready for old-fashioned liberation. By the end of the 20th century, one person in five in the world will
228 Editor's Introduction
be a Muslim: the global Muslim community, predominantly young, will be well over a billion strong. Among the Muslim numbers will be new Muslim states which will emerge from the breakdown of the Soviet and Chinese empires. Muslims in the USSR were the first to test Gorbachev's perestroika. The revolt in Azerbaijan during January 1990 was brutally suppressed; 6 but the USSR cannot sustain the pressure for freedom from its Islamic republics for long. Of the Union's 15 republics, six--Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan--are still, despite decades of religious repression, largely, actively and consciously Muslim, and eagerly seeking to control their own destinies. As Mazrui points out, the population of Soviet Muslims is growing five times faster than that of the Russians and the Muslims have shown 'the least inclination to cultural Russianization or to migration to other parts of the Soviet Union'. And as Ibrahim shows, Gorbachev's 'European home' has little meaning for 'the Asian Soviet Union'; 'it is the Muslim world that is redolent of many ties and affective bonds they have been denied over the last 70 years'. At present, the USSR's 53 million Muslims constitute one-fifth of the entire 280 million population of the USSR. After authentic Russians, they are its second largest population group. Within 30 years, Soviet Muslims are projected to outnumber Russians. We thus have the makings of two USSRs side by side: one young, dynamic, warm, optimistic and Muslim; the other ageing, grey, cold and uncertain of its ideological beliefs. 7 The emergence of the Muslim republics from Soviet occupation can only be a matter of time. Much the same can be said about China where the Muslims have been even more rebellious. The latest insurrection in Xinxiang during May 1990 was, not surprisingly, ruthlessly suppressed. 8 But rebellion against Chinese rule appears to be a natural way of life for the 60 million Chinese Muslims: an average of two bloody revolts a year occurs among the Muslim nationalities of China. The Chinese, following the European colonialist policies, have deliberately tried to
undermine their Muslim population by depriving them of educational and health facilities enjoyed by other Chinese nationalities. However, neither this nor ruthless repression has undermined the self-identity or the will for self-determination of Muslim Chinese. Again we have a predominantly young, highly motivated, active and consciously self-assertive population: the emergence of Muslim republics from an ageing and decaying Chinese communism cannot be more than a decade or two away. Then there will also be a Muslim republic in the heart of Europe. After 23 years of brutal Stalinist suppression, Albania's communist rulers have failed in their policy to eradicate Islam. An estimated 80% of Albanians are Muslims; and they share the same characteristics as their fellow Muslims in China and the USSR. The emergence of new Muslim republics would change the global character of the Muslim ummah. And as the discourse of Islamization begins to have a serious impact on Muslim thought and institutional practices, not least with the emergence of a new discourse on Muslim politics and polity, the fundamentalist stance will crumble under its weight. However, the external threats to the reemergence of a more enlightened, more pragmatic, more holistic, more broad-based, and hence more powerful Islam will escalate.
External environment
The end of the cold war has brought other, older animosities to the fore. Through the division of Germany and Europe, and the world into two feuding blocs of 'communist East' and 'free West', the age old conflict between Islam and the Occident was temporarily suspended. It is about to return with a vengeance. In a world of two global superpowers, the Third World in general and the Muslim world in particular was able to play one adversary against the other and hence gain certain political influence. But, as Mazrui laments, such political influence has now disappeared: he notes the loss of the strategic importance of Pakistan and Turkey and the
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Editor's Introduction 229
Muslim influence on the USA and in the United Nations. Such disadvantages are sustainable, even though they reduce Muslim countries to an even greater degree of political helplessness. But what will be of greater consequence, and would certainly determine the outlook for the next decade, is the casting of Islam as the new post-communist demon. We are, as Alvin Toffler tells us, entering the age of 'powershift'. 9 Old structures of power are breaking down while radically different structures of power are taking form. The present shape of the Gulf crisis is largely due to the virtual disappearance of the USSR, Iraq's old ally, as a global power. Whatever the outcome of the Gulf war, its end-product will certainly produce a number of significant powershifts. We have now moved from the idea of MAD (mutually assured destruction) to the notion of 'invincible force'. But despite the USA's 'invincible' military presence in the Gulf, the end of the cold war marks 'a visible decline in America's role'. 1° Nowhere is this decline more visible than in the economic sphere. In the 1980s the USA was transformed from the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor. In 1989 total US debt reached $664 billion and is likely to exceed $1 trillion in the next two or three years. In 1992, the USA is expected to pay $293 billion in interest--more than the cost of the Pentagon budget. After World War II, US money rebuilt Germany and Japan. In recent years, Japanese and German credit has effectively kept the USA afloat. While the USA, as Paul Kennedy predicts, goes the way of the British empire in the first half of this century, ~1 Japan and Germany are poised to return as global powers. The USA and Japan are standing in each other's way: one is losing its global economic domination while the other is gaining ground rapidly. Japan leads the world in technology and to prove the point would undoubtedly beat NASA in the race to establish manned bases on the moon. The very interdependence of the Japanese and US economies ensures that the smallest conflicts are liable to have significant consequences. Germany's
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economic growth is second only to Japan's. German unification and moves towards European integration would not only ensure Germany's emergence as a global economic power, they would also accentuate the conflict of interests between the new Germany and the USA. The USA will thus face a serious challenge for global domination from Japan and a 'fortress Europe' led by Germany. This takes us back to the beginning of the 20th century: the old pre-cold war adversaries--the USA against Japan and Germany--once again face each other for global domination. The emergence of Islam and the contemporary reassertion of the Muslim identity has be to be seen against this background. The new Muslim world with Asian republics will not only provide a battleground for economic interests, it will also be seen as the most hostile emerging contender for international influence, not least because it will be the only non-secular participant in the global power game. The Muslim civilization, therefore, faces arduous internal and external challenges. It has to reconstruct itself as a contemporary, global civilization--a task that has already begun in earnest. It has also to avoid being cast as a new demon or becoming entangled, like the Ottoman Caliphate at the beginning of this century, with the hegemonic rivalries of old adversaries. Under such circumstances, the Muslims would be wise to heed the advice of Gulzar Haider. In 'An "Islamic future" without a name', he is mystically transferred to Arafat, Saudi Arabia, in 2020, where the hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah) is in progress. The haWis the microcosm of the Muslim world; and Haider is able to note how various groups of Muslims have changed and developed during the three decades. He does not like what he sees and refuses to give the future he observes a name; for naming would be an exercise in containing, and anyway the future that he desires has no name. He thus advises us to think of the future as 'a space in which we contemplate the consequences of present actions', to seek 'not the knowledge of the future but its ethically disciplined vision', 'not its control but its intelligent contemplation'. Only this will
230 Editor's Introduction
fulfil o u r deepest desire and make Muslims 'the envy of angels'. Ziauddin 5ardar
Notes and references
1. Francis Fukuyama's article, 'End of history?', which originally appeared in The National Interest (Summer, 1989), has appeared in a number of other places, including The Washington Post, 30 July 1989, and The Independent, 20 and 21 September 1989. 2. Ibn Khaldun's, The Muqaddimah: Introduction to History, translated by F. Rosenthal (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), which precedes his multi-volume history of the world, was originally published in 1377. 3. See, for example, M. lqbal Asaria, 'Islamic banking at the crossroad', Inquiry, I(3), August 1984; 'Capitalism minus interest', Inquiry, 2(12), December 1985; 'Banking with Islam', Inquiry, 2(12), December 1985; and 'Constructing the edifice of Homo Islamicus; Inquiry, 2(4), April 1985. 4. Author of the classic study, Scientific Knowledge and Its 5ocial Problems (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971).
5. See, for example, Harold Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought (London, Macmillan, 1982); M. Hadi Hussain and A. H. Kamali, The Nature of the Islamic State (Karachi, National Book Foundation, 1977); Manzooruddin Ahmad, Islamic Political System in the Modern Age (Karachi, Saad Publications, 1983); Muhammad Aziz Ahmad, The Nature of Islamic Political Theory (Karachi, Maaref, 1975); Ahmad Hasan, The Doctrine of Ijma in Islam (Islamabad, islamic Research Institute, 1976); and Abdul Hamid Abu Sulayman, The Islamic Theory of International Relations: New Directions for Islamic Methodology and Thought (Herndon, VA, International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1987). 6. See numerous press reports during the second half of January 1990. 7. See Amir Taheri, Crescent in a Red 5ky (London, Hutchinson, 1990); and 'Muslims in the USSR', Special Issue of Amramco World, January-February 1990. 8. The Guardian, 10 May 1990. 9. Alvin Toffler, Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century (New York, Bantam Books, 1990). 10. Robert Tucker, '1989 and all that', Foreign Affairs, 69(4), Fall 1990. 11. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York, Random House, 1989).
FUTURES April 1991
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION Islam and the future Ziauddin Sardar
The tail end of the 20th century brings us right back to its beginning. In terms of power politics we have not so much moved forward as gone back to the future. At the dawn of the 20th century, Russia was on the verge of a breakdown. Japan and (a united) Germany were rising as global powers. China was nursing itself in the aftermath of the Boxer rebellion as it now recovers from the Tiananmen Square massacre. America, unsure of its future, was trying to acquire an empire by sending troops into Cuba, Panama and the Philippines; now, in the twilight years of its final decline, it is trying to sustain its influence by sending troops to South America and the Gulf. So what else has changed in the last 90 years? We are faced not so much with Fukuyama's arrogant and imperialist notion of the 'end of history', ~ but more in the way of Ibn Khaldun, its recycling3
Plus ca change, plus c'est la m~me chose. But there is a real difference between the beginning of the 20th century and the end of the millennium: that difference is Islam. At the beginning of the 20th century, Islam--colonized, defeated, stagnant --could easily have been written off from history and the future. At the dawn of the 21st century, Islam--resurgent, confid_ent, 'militant', 'fundamentalist', very much alive--is poised to become a global force. Whether it is seen as a force for liberation or as an authoritarian step back to the Middle Ages, Islam cannot be ignored. From the outside, that is from the perspective of the Occident, only a certain variety--the most overt, vocal
FUTURES April 1991
and aggressive---of the whole diverse array of Islamic revivalism appears to be visible. But within the shell of this virtual image, Muslim civilization has been reconstructing itself. This process of reconstruction, painful and piecemeal, incorporates intellectual, cultural, economic and political aspects. It is a process which will continue well into the next century; and it will have, as it already has had, its setbacks as well as its successes. This special issue of Futures sets out to provide an inside view of how Islam is reconstructing itself as a contemporary worldview and civilization. The holistic and the reductive From the outset it is important to appreciate both the nature of Islam and its contemporary manifestations. Islam is a religion, culture, tradition and civilization all at once; but to see it as any one of these single components is to miss the whole picture. Islam is best appreciated as a wordview: as a way of looking at and shaping the world; as a system of knowing, being and doing. The literal meaning of Islam is submission and peace. To be a Muslim is to submit voluntarily to the will of One, All Knowing, All Powerful, Merciful and Beneficient God and to seek peace on the basis of this submission. This peace is sought within a parameter of objective and eternal concepts and values that are furnished by the Qur'an and the Sunnah (sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad) and that shape the worldview of Islam. The fundamental concept of the Islamic worldview is tawheed, which is normally translated as 'the Unity of
224 Editor's Introduction
God', but which by extension also signifies the unity of humankind and the unity of people and nature. Within this all-embracing framework of unity the creation is a trust from God, and men and w o m e n - - w h o are all equal in the sight of God whatever their colour or creed--are khalifa or trustees of God. Humankind is responsible for this trust, and each individual will be held accountable for his or her action in the akhira (the Hereafter). The responsibilities of the trusteeship are fulfilled on the basis of two other fundamental Islamic concepts: ilm (distributive knowledge) and adl (social justice). The thought and actions of the khalifa are based not on blind faith but on knowledge; and the sole function of all the ideas and activities of the trustee are to promote allround justice. Both ilm and adl are sought on the basis of ijma (consensus), shura (consultation and participation) and istislah (public interest). Within this simple but integrated ethical framework, all ways of knowing, being and doing are halal (praiseworthy); outside this ethical circumference, where there is danger, lies the haram (blameworthy) territory. The challenge for any Muslim people is to map out the halal territory most suitable for their historic epoch. The individuals who voluntarily accept the challenge and undertake to work for this goal, On the basis of the above conceptual and value matrix, are bound together in a community, the ummah.
Reductive interpretation I have, of course, presented a holistic picture of the Islamic worldview. But contemporary Muslims seek a very reductive interpretation and implementation of Islam. There are a number of historic reasons for this. The Muslim understanding of the Islamic worldview has been frozen in history; during its long decline and eventual colonization, the Muslim civilization lost its capability of ijtihad, or the capacity for 'reasoned struggle' to develop fresh appreciations and interpretations of the fundamental sources. Colonization produced further ossification where obscurantist traditionalism came to be seen as the sole protection from the encroachment of
the West. Finally, 'development' and accompanied westernization systematically stripped the holistic, ethical layers from Muslim society leaving the fragmented shell of 'minimal Islam'. Thus, in the contemporary world Islam manifests itself in a number of fractured and fragmented, reductive ways. What we have is a whole array of approaches to Islam, all incorporating a selection of original teachings and elements of truths. Amongst this array are those who see Islam simply as a private faith; those who are committed to various traditions within the religion--the historic trend of literal interpretation of the sources of Islam (the Qur'an and the Sunnah), the equally old and established trend of the mystical interpretations of fundamental sources (which leads to a variety of Sufism), a number of ossified juristic traditions; and even those who are commited to the political differences arising from various interpretations (the Sunni-Shia divide). By the very nature of their faith, Muslims are required both to engage with the world and to change it. Thus, each variety of Islamic commitment leads to its own particular way of changing the world: from the conventional 'preaching' to cultural activism to overt political action to the ideological quest for a utopian state. And each action, each thought, is justified by one's most favoured textual interpretation or tradition. The process of reconstruction is a means to heal these fractures and to move forward on the basis of an integrated, holistic understanding of Islam. It is an effort to move beyond an ossified traditionalism, beyond parochial interpretations, towards a confident and culturally authentic reconstruction of a contemporary Muslim civilization. It is an effort to rethink and rework the Islamic paradigm from the first principles, the basic conceptual and ethical teachings of the Qur'an and the Sunnah, so that Muslim societies can engage with contemporary reality in a truly Islamic manner. The objectives of this civilizational project is to produce a fresh, contemporary way of knowing, doing and being that draws its sustenance from the ethical precepts of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. It is an exercise in adjusting to
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Editor's Introduction
change within an eternal, immutable framework of ideas, concepts, values and ethical principles. This is a formidable, multigenerational task--but it is a long overdue task that is slowly, but constantly, gaining ground and attracting the intellectual and physical energies of thinkers, academics, professionals and activists throughout the international Muslim community, the ummah. Parameters of reconstruction
The intellectual cornerstone of the process aiming to reconstruct a contemporary Muslim civilization is the growing discourse on 'lslamization of knowledge'. In 'Rethinking knowledge: "lslamization" and the future', Merryl Wyn Davies argues that 'this growing discourse is a search for the recovery of the Islamic paradigm as the basis for changing the reality of Muslim existence in the modern world and thus creating a distinct and distinctively different future for Muslim civilization'. This discourse, despite some of its unsavoury political manifestations in Pakistan, Sudan and other Muslim countries, is not about a retreat from modernity or a return to history. It is a debate about 'how to ask questions, about what are appropriate questions and how to recognize appropriate answers'. It is a debate at the centre of which lies the idea of knowledge. Davies discusses two main approaches to the Islamization of knowledge--the institutional and the concep t u a l - a n d illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of both by using the single example of the evolution of Islamic banks. She emphasizes that the discourse is developing within three parameters: holism, recognition of uncertainty and complexity, and an acknowledgement of ignorance. The intellectually bold and formidable enterprise of 'lslamization of knowledge', which emerged from the realization that both modernism and traditionalism have utterly failed Muslim societies and which is now into its second decade, has already produced certain notable dividends. A number of new disciplines are being forged, at least one has gained a firm foothold in universities through-
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out the Muslim world, and still others have learned journals devoted entirely to their exploration. One of the successes of the 'lslamization' project has been the emergence of the disciplines and institutions of Islamic economics. The idea and ideal behind Islamic economics is not one-dimensional growth, or development, but a societal transformation that addresses four basic needs of Muslim communities: justice, social welfare, sustainability and economic activity based on the spirit and ideals of Islam. As Muhammad Akram Khan points out in his article on 'The future of Islamic economics', although the principles (total absence of interest, riba; social welfare based on obligatory poor tax, zakah, to name just two) and institutions of Islamic economics, such as Islamic banks, as well as its theoretical structure are in the embryonic phase of evolution, they are already having an impact both on Muslim societies and at the global level. The new discipline has produced a vast body of literature and Khan provides an outline of its emerging theoretical structure and describes its institutional make-up. With the help of examples, he illustrates how an Islamic economy would tackle unemployment, inflation and public debt and explains how the western notion of development is reformulated in an Islamic framework. Although Khan provides a rosy picture of Islamic economics, both its theory and practice have come under severe criticism. In particular, the notion of Islamic banks (which now operate in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan, as well as in Europe) has been widely criticized, not least by Davies in this issue of Futures, for not being fully thought through. 3 It is constructive criticism of this nature which will further refine both the ideas and practices of Islamic economics. There is, however, a wide consensus among Muslim economists on the basic structure of Islamic economics. This is not the case for Islamic science. The debate on Islamic science, which has more recent origins than Islamic economics, is more wide-ranging, with different positions, some totally naive, being deeply entrenched. Jerome Ravetz 4 has over the last decade
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participated in and contributed to numerous seminars and conferences on Islamic science as an external observer and critic. In 'Prospects for an Islamic science' he identifies three different positions on Islamic science: the apologetic stance which 'attempts to show that the sacred, timeless truths of religion are actually not contradicted by the discoveries of science', the tendency to embrace science in the name of religion, and the attempts to discover a characteristically Islamic style of science. He leans towards the last position--which attempts to base the policy, methodology and practice of science on the basic ethical and value concepts of Islam--as the most viable option. But he warns that it 'runs against the tide of both conventional modernism and conventional traditionalism', and as such it will take a few decades before 'it can make an impact in terms of power and ordinary practice'. However, for Ravetz the real hope of humanizing science lies in the reemergence of monotheistic ethics to replace a whole variety of polytheistic ideals and practices. The increasing ethical vacuum within science and the 'post-scientific world', he argues, can only be filled by a dynamic monotheistic commitment which 'attempts to resolve from moment to moment the dialectic of God's transcendence and immanence'. It is in its attempt to move scientific enterprise towards 'the essential ethical core of monotheism' that Ravetz sees 'the possibility, indeed the necessity, of an Islamic science of the future'. The end of 'fundamentalism'? The debate on the nature and style of Islamic science, the emergence of Islamic economics as a serious local and global force, and the discourse on Islamization of knowledge are all preliminaries to a genuine, contemporary revival of Islam. In most Muslim societies, the new debates, discourses and institutions coexist with more established traditional and conservative ideational and institutional forces. The hold of the traditional interpretations of Islam on Muslim masses cannot be underestimated. It is the traditional varieties of Islam which, argues All Mazrui in his
article, 'The resurgence of Islam and the decline of communism: what is the connection?', have played an important but unrecognized part in the demise of the cold war era. Mazrui argues that perestroika began not in Moscow but in Afghanistan where a fatal blow was dealt to Soviet expansionist ambitions. The mujahiddin are a synthesis of religious fervour and militant Afghan nationalism; and they 'put up a far greater resistance to Soviet occupation than had the people of Hungary in 1956, or the people of Czechoslovakia in 1968, or the people of Poland at any time since World War II'. Whereas the Afghanistan experience spelled the end of Pax Sovietica, the Iranian revolution led to the humiliation of the USA. While the USSR was humbled, the USA became more arrogant and began to throw US military might around the world. It was, argues Mazrui, 'a combination of a more modest Kremlin and a more arrogant Washington [that] provided the setting for Gorbachev's determination to sue for peace under the second Reagan administration'. If the mujahiddin had won outright in Afghanistan they surely would have established an 'Islamic state'--perhaps a Sunni version of the revolutionary Iranian theocracy. To establish an ideological Islamic state has been the fundamental goal of all contemporary Islamic movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Sudan and Jamaat-e-lslami in Pakistan. But as S. Parvez Manzoor argues powerfully in his article on 'The future of Muslim politics: critique of the "fundamentalist" theory of the Islamic state', all experiments in the establishment of a romantic Islamic state have turned out to be theocratic (Iran) or totalitarian (Pakistan, Sudan) nightmares. What distinguishes 'fundamentalism' from traditional Islam, Manzoor tells us, is that 'the cognitive theory of "state" is "fundamental" to its vision of Islam and represents a paramount fact of its consciousness'. Manzoor argues that this fundamentalist vision of Islam as state introduces radical, not to say heretical, ideas in the holistic worldview of Islam. From a 'totalistic theocentric worldview, a God-centred way of life and thought, of knowledge and action',
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Islam is transformed into a 'totalitarian theocratic world order that submits every human situation to the arbitration of the state'. Manzoor regards the fundamentalist model and strategy, based as it is on a superficial analysis of the history, institutions and ideologies of the modern world, as superfluous and irrelevant to contemporary times: 'it is all cause and no programme'. Despite its enviable resources of will and energy, it will die out in its own uselessness. The fundamentalist discourse of Islamic state not only turns politics into metaphysics, it also allows obscurantism to go unchallenged. As Anwar Jbrahim points out in his article on 'The umrnah and tomorrow's world', it 'sets a false agenda of peripheral issues as the only topics that get serious and sustained attention'. But what concerns Ibrahim most is that this exclusivist outlook 'violates the necessary moral meaning of the concept of urnmah' because it 'causes division and engenders unnecessary conflict' and 'enables some expressions to become Muslim imperialism writ large or writ small'. Classical Muslim discourse, as Manzoor points out, has little to do with state and politics but bears entirely upon the issue of faith and community. It is in the concept of a community bound by faith, the umrnah, that Ibrahim sees the basis for a viable future for the Muslim civilization. The Muslim identity, argues Ibrahim, is not only rooted in Islamic history and tradition, it is also intrinsically connected to the notion of ummah. The idea of the ummah is not simply that Muslims are a community, but how Muslims should become a community in relation to each other, other communities and the natural world. It is manifesting in thought, action and openness a distinctive moral vision that is the raison d'etre of the urnmah. It is an enduring commitment to the dynamism of a constant set of moral concepts and precepts that creates the contours and ultimate configuration of the ummah. Moreover, the ummah is 'not a cultural entity patterned upon the norms of any one dominant group' but 'exists within and is expressed through diverse cultural groups'.
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In moving towards the notion of the urnmah, in expressing unity through diversity, Muslim societies would have to abandon the seriously flawed and dangerously obsolete fundamentalist notion of the Islamic state. Manzoor's uncompromising analysis, Ibrahim's vision of tomorrow's ummah, Mazrui's 'kiss of death' theory (any authoritarian Muslim state that gets the support of the West soon withers away), strongly suggest that modernist autocratic and traditionalist despotic rulers, even where they are sustained by the help of ultraconservative traditional scholars, cannot survive beyond the end of the 20th century. While the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam has tremendous emotional and crowd-pulling power, it cannot produce a contemporary polity --this is the lesson of recent Muslim history. This, however, does not mean that Muslim societies will embrace western-style liberal democracy with open arms. It means that Muslim people will seek new models of participatory and representative governments based on their own worldview. Manzoor suggests that it has to be based on the idea of shura which 'when interpreted properly . . . means that Muslims must evolve their own forms of representative governments'. A considerable amount of work on the contemporary institutionalization of the notion of shura and ijma (the politics of consensus) is now being undertaken by Muslim scholars, s
New composition of the ummah Whatever the nature of emerging representative governments in Muslim societies, the composition of the international Muslim community will change considerably over the next two decades. The end of the cold war is already beginning to have an impact on the Muslim ummah. The war was cold because it froze history in Europe and abandoned the fate of some 150 million Muslims to communism. Whatever the future of perestroika in the USSR and old guard communism in China, Muslims in the Eastern bloc are ready for old-fashioned liberation. By the end of the 20th century, one person in five in the world will
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be a Muslim: the global Muslim community, predominantly young, will be well over a billion strong. Among the Muslim numbers will be new Muslim states which will emerge from the breakdown of the Soviet and Chinese empires. Muslims in the USSR were the first to test Gorbachev's perestroika. The revolt in Azerbaijan during January 1990 was brutally suppressed; 6 but the USSR cannot sustain the pressure for freedom from its Islamic republics for long. Of the Union's 15 republics, six--Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan--are still, despite decades of religious repression, largely, actively and consciously Muslim, and eagerly seeking to control their own destinies. As Mazrui points out, the population of Soviet Muslims is growing five times faster than that of the Russians and the Muslims have shown 'the least inclination to cultural Russianization or to migration to other parts of the Soviet Union'. And as Ibrahim shows, Gorbachev's 'European home' has little meaning for 'the Asian Soviet Union'; 'it is the Muslim world that is redolent of many ties and affective bonds they have been denied over the last 70 years'. At present, the USSR's 53 million Muslims constitute one-fifth of the entire 280 million population of the USSR. After authentic Russians, they are its second largest population group. Within 30 years, Soviet Muslims are projected to outnumber Russians. We thus have the makings of two USSRs side by side: one young, dynamic, warm, optimistic and Muslim; the other ageing, grey, cold and uncertain of its ideological beliefs. 7 The emergence of the Muslim republics from Soviet occupation can only be a matter of time. Much the same can be said about China where the Muslims have been even more rebellious. The latest insurrection in Xinxiang during May 1990 was, not surprisingly, ruthlessly suppressed. 8 But rebellion against Chinese rule appears to be a natural way of life for the 60 million Chinese Muslims: an average of two bloody revolts a year occurs among the Muslim nationalities of China. The Chinese, following the European colonialist policies, have deliberately tried to
undermine their Muslim population by depriving them of educational and health facilities enjoyed by other Chinese nationalities. However, neither this nor ruthless repression has undermined the self-identity or the will for self-determination of Muslim Chinese. Again we have a predominantly young, highly motivated, active and consciously self-assertive population: the emergence of Muslim republics from an ageing and decaying Chinese communism cannot be more than a decade or two away. Then there will also be a Muslim republic in the heart of Europe. After 23 years of brutal Stalinist suppression, Albania's communist rulers have failed in their policy to eradicate Islam. An estimated 80% of Albanians are Muslims; and they share the same characteristics as their fellow Muslims in China and the USSR. The emergence of new Muslim republics would change the global character of the Muslim ummah. And as the discourse of Islamization begins to have a serious impact on Muslim thought and institutional practices, not least with the emergence of a new discourse on Muslim politics and polity, the fundamentalist stance will crumble under its weight. However, the external threats to the reemergence of a more enlightened, more pragmatic, more holistic, more broad-based, and hence more powerful Islam will escalate.
External environment
The end of the cold war has brought other, older animosities to the fore. Through the division of Germany and Europe, and the world into two feuding blocs of 'communist East' and 'free West', the age old conflict between Islam and the Occident was temporarily suspended. It is about to return with a vengeance. In a world of two global superpowers, the Third World in general and the Muslim world in particular was able to play one adversary against the other and hence gain certain political influence. But, as Mazrui laments, such political influence has now disappeared: he notes the loss of the strategic importance of Pakistan and Turkey and the
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Muslim influence on the USA and in the United Nations. Such disadvantages are sustainable, even though they reduce Muslim countries to an even greater degree of political helplessness. But what will be of greater consequence, and would certainly determine the outlook for the next decade, is the casting of Islam as the new post-communist demon. We are, as Alvin Toffler tells us, entering the age of 'powershift'. 9 Old structures of power are breaking down while radically different structures of power are taking form. The present shape of the Gulf crisis is largely due to the virtual disappearance of the USSR, Iraq's old ally, as a global power. Whatever the outcome of the Gulf war, its end-product will certainly produce a number of significant powershifts. We have now moved from the idea of MAD (mutually assured destruction) to the notion of 'invincible force'. But despite the USA's 'invincible' military presence in the Gulf, the end of the cold war marks 'a visible decline in America's role'. 1° Nowhere is this decline more visible than in the economic sphere. In the 1980s the USA was transformed from the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor. In 1989 total US debt reached $664 billion and is likely to exceed $1 trillion in the next two or three years. In 1992, the USA is expected to pay $293 billion in interest--more than the cost of the Pentagon budget. After World War II, US money rebuilt Germany and Japan. In recent years, Japanese and German credit has effectively kept the USA afloat. While the USA, as Paul Kennedy predicts, goes the way of the British empire in the first half of this century, ~1 Japan and Germany are poised to return as global powers. The USA and Japan are standing in each other's way: one is losing its global economic domination while the other is gaining ground rapidly. Japan leads the world in technology and to prove the point would undoubtedly beat NASA in the race to establish manned bases on the moon. The very interdependence of the Japanese and US economies ensures that the smallest conflicts are liable to have significant consequences. Germany's
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economic growth is second only to Japan's. German unification and moves towards European integration would not only ensure Germany's emergence as a global economic power, they would also accentuate the conflict of interests between the new Germany and the USA. The USA will thus face a serious challenge for global domination from Japan and a 'fortress Europe' led by Germany. This takes us back to the beginning of the 20th century: the old pre-cold war adversaries--the USA against Japan and Germany--once again face each other for global domination. The emergence of Islam and the contemporary reassertion of the Muslim identity has be to be seen against this background. The new Muslim world with Asian republics will not only provide a battleground for economic interests, it will also be seen as the most hostile emerging contender for international influence, not least because it will be the only non-secular participant in the global power game. The Muslim civilization, therefore, faces arduous internal and external challenges. It has to reconstruct itself as a contemporary, global civilization--a task that has already begun in earnest. It has also to avoid being cast as a new demon or becoming entangled, like the Ottoman Caliphate at the beginning of this century, with the hegemonic rivalries of old adversaries. Under such circumstances, the Muslims would be wise to heed the advice of Gulzar Haider. In 'An "Islamic future" without a name', he is mystically transferred to Arafat, Saudi Arabia, in 2020, where the hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah) is in progress. The haWis the microcosm of the Muslim world; and Haider is able to note how various groups of Muslims have changed and developed during the three decades. He does not like what he sees and refuses to give the future he observes a name; for naming would be an exercise in containing, and anyway the future that he desires has no name. He thus advises us to think of the future as 'a space in which we contemplate the consequences of present actions', to seek 'not the knowledge of the future but its ethically disciplined vision', 'not its control but its intelligent contemplation'. Only this will
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fulfil o u r deepest desire and make Muslims 'the envy of angels'. Ziauddin 5ardar
Notes and references
1. Francis Fukuyama's article, 'End of history?', which originally appeared in The National Interest (Summer, 1989), has appeared in a number of other places, including The Washington Post, 30 July 1989, and The Independent, 20 and 21 September 1989. 2. Ibn Khaldun's, The Muqaddimah: Introduction to History, translated by F. Rosenthal (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), which precedes his multi-volume history of the world, was originally published in 1377. 3. See, for example, M. lqbal Asaria, 'Islamic banking at the crossroad', Inquiry, I(3), August 1984; 'Capitalism minus interest', Inquiry, 2(12), December 1985; 'Banking with Islam', Inquiry, 2(12), December 1985; and 'Constructing the edifice of Homo Islamicus; Inquiry, 2(4), April 1985. 4. Author of the classic study, Scientific Knowledge and Its 5ocial Problems (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971).
5. See, for example, Harold Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought (London, Macmillan, 1982); M. Hadi Hussain and A. H. Kamali, The Nature of the Islamic State (Karachi, National Book Foundation, 1977); Manzooruddin Ahmad, Islamic Political System in the Modern Age (Karachi, Saad Publications, 1983); Muhammad Aziz Ahmad, The Nature of Islamic Political Theory (Karachi, Maaref, 1975); Ahmad Hasan, The Doctrine of Ijma in Islam (Islamabad, islamic Research Institute, 1976); and Abdul Hamid Abu Sulayman, The Islamic Theory of International Relations: New Directions for Islamic Methodology and Thought (Herndon, VA, International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1987). 6. See numerous press reports during the second half of January 1990. 7. See Amir Taheri, Crescent in a Red 5ky (London, Hutchinson, 1990); and 'Muslims in the USSR', Special Issue of Amramco World, January-February 1990. 8. The Guardian, 10 May 1990. 9. Alvin Toffler, Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century (New York, Bantam Books, 1990). 10. Robert Tucker, '1989 and all that', Foreign Affairs, 69(4), Fall 1990. 11. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York, Random House, 1989).
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