The Islamic World and Modern Challenges

By Aman Singh, New Age Islam 5 January 2024 Islam Only Spread Because Of The Democratic Thought Of The Prophet Mohammad. It Got A Wider Horizon Because Its Message Was To Absolve Racism. When Prophet Mohammad Was Making A Hajj To Mecca, He Did It Without Shedding An Ounce Of Blood. Mohammad Resolved The Situation Through Practical As Well As Moral Means. ------ The Islamic World is facing several challenges nowadays. Its challenge has also not emanated from modern times. In other words, we cannot discount the significance of world history. According to a 1959 article by Najmoud Din Bammat, “Islam today has to go through several revolutions at once: a religious revolution like the Reformation; an intellectual and moral revolution like the eighteenth-century Enlightenment; an economic and social revolution like the European Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century; and, in the age of the two great Eastern and Western blocs or systems, several small nationalist revolutions of its own. At a time when pacts are being forged on a world scale, the Muslim countries are still waiting and searching for their Garibaldis”. Why has the Islamic world fallen behind in a number of areas? This is not the whole truth. Islam originated from a period 1000 years ago when the Industrial Revolution came into being. That doesn’t mean that no scientific inventions took place through Islam. It was under Islam that some of the most remarkable discoveries were made. In trigonometry, the Muslims discovered the sine and tangent. The Muslim geographers rectified imperfect measurements of latitude and longitude made by Ptolemy. The Muslims also deserve high marks for optics, for chemistry too i.e. the discovery of the distillation of alcohol, the manufacture of elixirs and Sulphur acid. Islam only spread because of the democratic thought of the prophet Mohammad. It got a wider horizon because its message was to absolve racism. When prophet Mohammad was making a hajj to Mecca, he did it without shedding an ounce of blood. Mohammad resolved the situation through practical as well as moral means. Fernand Braudel has also reiterated in a passage what S. D. Goitin has remarked: “Was it the fault of the 'Barbarians'? This is what a recent historian, S. D. Goitin has suggested. They had been the military saviours of Islam against the threats from Asia and the West. Had they also sapped it from within?” This passage reminds me of how a country like India has come into being. A country like India too has been built only because it had internal purges and thus later only it was able to build a military to protect itself. India had its heroes in the form of social reformers and communists. Mahatma Gandhi, Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule, Periyar were all social reformers. It has also seen militant struggles against feudal oppression led by communists and revolutionaries. All of which are being diluted under the current Hindutva government. The Soviet Union and China themselves became what they are today because they had internal purges. Both of them fought the bourgeoisie of their respective nations. The situation has become different today and the methods to be adopted have also become different. Wherever countries are fighting in themselves or among each other western countries supply weapons to the regressive side. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan and ISIS in Iraq. Before the West intervened Afghanistan had democracy and Iraq too had peace. The war on those countries for their natural resources like oil opium and other natural resources had a very debilitating consequence on its citizens. The internal purges required to establish a state are not only required for appetites but the appetites of the coming generations too. Internal purges are only possible if there is faith in humanity and humanism. Not just Allah, Ram or any other god. Reading the Quran or Sunnah is important. But the same has been written 1300 years back. Its moral guidelines for living are important but equally is its non-applicability in modern times. Prophet Mohammad himself used the term ‘ijtihad’ to explain circumstances where the Quran or Sunnah is not applicable and called on sound reason to resolve such circumstances. But Muslims who aren’t educated as well as those who are partly educated rely on just the Quran or Sunnah. The more things cannot be able to brought under the light of reason, the easier to be able to judge, so says the modern caliphate. Fernand Braudel has also given solutions to the problems faced by the Islamic world. He says, “In the struggle for development, every economy has certain advantages or trump cards. Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria have oil; Egypt has the fertile Nile Valley, the Suez Canal, and high Morocco has industrial development, very often intelligently devised; Indonesia has rubber, oil and tin mines; Pakistan has vast resources of wheat and jute. These assets are invaluable: but the task remains difficult and risky. The problems to be solved are intricate. At once economic and social, they are so closely interrelated that it seems impossible to tackle them one by one. Taken together, they demand a formidable plan of campaign. This involves, in fact: • Above all, better farming. This means doing violence to archaic property laws, attacking the multiple problems of irrigation, and stopping the erosion and devastation of arable land. In a word, agrarian policy and technology. • Establishing industrial firms (State-owned or private, in heavy industry or light), and if possible integrating them into the country's economy as a whole. They need to be based on the economy's global structure and contribute to its general growth. • Solving the problem of investments — a burning question because it involves foreign aid (which may be private international capital, brought in via Swiss banks, or Governmental assistance from the Soviet Union, the United States, France, or the European Community). • Creating a market. Here, there are two problems. First, a market presupposes a certain standard of living (which is what all these measures are intended to attain); and secondly, any effective market needs to be far bigger than on a merely national scale. Hence various plans, launched with more enthusiasm than success, for a Pan-Arab market, a Maghreb market or an African market. The dreams are sensible: what is hard is to make them come true. • Educating and training the workforce, all the more necessary in that automation, otherwise feasible in industries starting from scratch, would not solve the urgent, crucial problem of unemployment and surplus labour. • Training managers and others: engineers, teachers and administrators. Teaching and technical training are on the agenda, and they are long-term tasks. Only great eagerness to learn, on the part of the people, will make it possible to overcome immense difficulties here”. The woman's question too is as important as the above-mentioned points. I am not going to generalise the question of women here. Those countries who lag in the above-mentioned points surely won't be able to treat their citizens equally. here are few opportunities for employment and education for everyone in the war-torn countries of Afghanistan and Iraq, which are better referred to as the backward regions. This is especially true for women. The CIA-led Western coup took over Afghanistan. While still suffering from civil conflict, Syria is one example of a country where women can live in a democracy. Nonetheless, women in Iran are not only compelled to wear the burqa but also have limited access to work and educational possibilities. Those who can do so come from very wealthy families and go to countries in the West and Europe. In Iran, women who speak out against the veil system face imprisonment, flogging, and even death by beating. Mahsa Amini's situation is the most recent; numerous other Iranian women are incarcerated for speaking out against the veil system. After falling under Western control, Libya also allowed the slave trade to flourish once more. The only exceptions are still Uzbekistan and the Islamic countries under Soviet influence. In certain areas, the West attempted to sow discord and establish an Islamic state. And it wrecked devastation where it succeeded. similar to Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. The less developed Arab countries share essentially similar political and socioeconomic frameworks. Similarly, there are certain areas where the Arab world may work together. The first would be a kind of democratic revolution, with the rights to free education, universal suffrage, and the right to express disagreement. A quest for the future goes hand in hand with revolutions, which do not adhere to fads or trends. I am not referring to colour revolutions spearheaded by the West, but rather revolutions that alter the population's spatiotemporal longevity. 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