How do you distinguish between an Islamist and a Muslim?
Thanks to Suneel who alerted me to this interview with prolific author, broadcaster and columnist Tarek Fateh (also author of “Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State”)…
Two short excerpts:
How do you distinguish between an Islamist and a Muslim?
An Islamist is someone who believes in invoking Islam for a political agenda. A Muslim, on the other hand, uses Islam as a moral compass for his betterment and the betterment of his family. An Islamist is also a Muslim but a Muslim is not an Islamist.
India’s first education minister, Abul Kalam Azad, a most respected statesman in the country, was not an Islamist. He was against Islamists. Similarly, there are many ayatollahs in Iran who are in jails — as they are not Islamists. [ link ]
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…The movement for Pakistan was never by the people that comprise Pakistan today. The movement for Pakistan was essentially by upper class Muslims of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
Right up to 1946, Balochistan and Sindh were not voting for the Muslim League. They were voting for the (Indian National) Congress party. Balochistan was an independent state and they declared their independence three days before India’s Independence.
The coalition government headed by Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy in Bengal was the result of Direct Action Day of August 16, 1945, which led to the massacre — actually genocide — of Hindus in Noakhali (now in Bangladesh). [ link ]
Related Post: Will the Darul Uloom now declare war on “Islamism”?
Also recommended: Distinguishing between Islam and Islamism (from 10 years ago!).
Who is a moderate Muslim? One who stays away from politics? One who rejects Sharia? One who is open to reforming his personal law in the light of modern day sensibilities and values? One who excises/reinterprets hate-filled verses in the Koran as context-bound and no longer relevant?
Somehow trying to meet such a one seems ‘chasing a mirage’ to anyone outside the community. Does a Muslim who meets the aforementioned minimum criteria get accepted as a Muslim by his community? Can one be a ‘Muslim’ at heart even though rejected as an infidel or blasphemer by the clerics?
Religion in general can be respected as that institution which has preserved the mystical and higher reaches of human awareness. Can Islam claim itself to be such a religion? To me it’s only politics, imperialist ideology and other more mundane matters
Please read what Mr Elst has to say :
Outsiders will be surprised to find that the same school of which Maudoodi was a faithful spokesman, also brought forth Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was Congress president for several terms and who was to become minister of Education in free India. Understandably but unjustifiably, Azad has often been described as as moderate and nationalist Muslim: he rejected the Partition of India and the foundation of Pakistan, not because he rejected the idea of a Muslim state, but because he wanted all of India to become a Muslim state in time.
When in the forties the Partition seemed unavoidable, Azad patronized proposals to preserve India’s unity, stipulating that half of all members of parliament and of the government had to be Muslims (then 24% of the population), with the other half to be divided between Hindus, Ambedkarites, Christians, and the rest. Short, a state in which Muslims would rule and non-Muslims would be second-class citizens electorally and politically. The Cabinet Mission Plan, proposed by the British as the ultimate sop for the Muslim League, equally promised an effective parity between Muslims and non-Muslims at the Central Government level and a veto right for the Muslim minority. Without Gandhiji’s and other Congress leaders’ knowing, Congress president Azad assured the British negotiators that he would get the plan accepted by the Congress. When he was caught in the act of lying to the Mahatma about the plan and his assurance, he lost some credit even among the naive Hindus who considered him a moderate. But he retained his position of trust in Nehru’s cabinet, and continued his work for the ultimate transformation of India into a Muslim State.
Maulana Azad’s pleas for Hindu-Muslim co-operation had an esoteric meaning, clear enough for Muslims but invisible for wilfully gullible non-Muslims like his colleagues in the Congress leadership. Azad declared that Hindu-Muslim co- operation was in complete conformity with the Prophet’s vision, for “Mohammed had also made a treaty with the Jews of Madina”. He certainly had, but the practical impact of this treaty was that within a few years, two of the three Jewish clans in Medina had ben chased away, and the third clan had been massacred to the last man (the second clan had only been saved by the intervention of other Medinese leaders, for Mohammed had wanted to kill them too). Maulana Azad could mention Mohammed’s treaty with the Jews as a model for Hindu-Muslim co-operation only because he was confident that few Hindus were aware of the end of the story, and that better-informed Hindus honoured a kind of taboo on criticism of Islam and its Prophet.
This parenthesis about Maulana Azad may help clear up some illusions which Hindus and Westerners fondly entertain about the possibility of Islamic moderacy. The Deoband school was as fundamentalist in its Azad face as it was in its Maudoodi heart, and its spokesmen had no problems with the horrors of Islamic history, nor did they make attempts to rewrite it. That Muslims had persecuted and massacred Hindus, counted as the fulfilment of Allah’s salvation plan to transform the whole world into a Dar-ul-Islam. As Mohammed Iqbal wrote: “All land belongs to the Muslims, because it belongs to their God.” (Iqbal would, however, end up in the Aligarh camp, cfr. infra) Maulana Azad shared this view of history. He condemned Moghul emperor Akbar’s tolerant rule as the near-suicide of Indian Islam, and praised fanatics like the theologian Ahmad Sirhindi, who through his opposition to Akbar’s tolerance had brought the Moghul dynasty back on the right track of Hind-persecution.
From The Roots of Violent Islamist Extremism by Maajid Nawaz:
Understanding the ideology of Islamism
In understanding what the ideology of Islamism is, it would help to begin with the name. The suffix ‘ism’ has been added to Islam so as to draw attention to the political nature of the subject matter. Islam is a faith; Islamism is an ideology that uses Islam the faith as a justification. Some of you may be reluctant to call this ideology Islamism. There exists an understandable concern of not wanting to alienate Muslims. It is my contention however that only by using Islamism can one popularise the notion that the ideology is indeed distinct from the faith, and that Islam is innocent from the excesses of Islamism. The presence of Islam in the title should be no more troubling for Muslims than the presence of ‘social’ in Socialism is for sociologists. The presence of the word Islam in Islamism, like social in socialism, indicates the justificatory claim made by the ideologue rather than an admission of the validity of such a claim. I firmly believe that by claiming the word Islamism, and helping shape how it is used, one can direct the debate in the right way with the intention of distinguishing the ideology from the faith. Finally, for all their feign of offence, Islamists use this word in Arabic when differentiating themselves from other Arab political trends, such as Bathism.
“Azad has often been described as as moderate and nationalist Muslim: he rejected the Partition of India and the foundation of Pakistan, not because he rejected the idea of a Muslim state, but because he wanted all of India to become a Muslim state in time.” Wasn’t this sentiment mirrored recently by an Imam in Delhi or somewhere who said that Muslims ruled India for 800 years and Inshallah they will do so again.
In England, Muslims want the Sharia law. It seems that in every country where they are a sizable minority, they want their own laws. And of course, where they are the majority, there is only their religious law and no accommodation of minorities. So the question is, is there really a non-political Islam? And if so, where is it being practiced?
I wonder sometimes whether the word Islamism as opposed to Islam is used to hoodwink the rest of the world. Muslims, by pretending that while Islamism is the problem and not Islam itself, can turn the dialogue away from the root problem. But the problem really is rooted in Islam and the world view and beliefs it has. Sam Harris makes an excellent point about how actions are the result of beliefs and attitudes held. Thus how can a people say that that they perform all these actions but these are contrary to their beliefs.
Muslims contend that Islamists have mis-interpreted the Koran. Fine. But is there a mass movement to protest that. Are you seeing Islamists thrown in jail in any Muslim country for being extremist. Why is that explanation always targeted at the non-muslim community?
And if in fact the
And if in fact the religion is peaceful as Muslims proclaim it to be, then they need to practice is peacefully first and reign in all the extremism BEFORE declaring that Islam means peace or whatever.