The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State

Title: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State

Author: Tarek Fatah

Publisher: Kautilya, 2016 (First published 2008)

ISBN: 9788192998770

Pages: 403

The world is witnessing incidents of jihadi violence by the hour. Even though Islam is often touted as a religion of peace, non-Muslims and an increasing section of Muslims perceive it to be otherwise. A noted feature in the discourse on terror and its religio-political inspiration is the total absence of the voice of the moderates in the Muslim community. Surprising it may seem to us, but the extremists occupy centre stage in the debate and spread a false sense of victimhood among young Muslims. The radicals want to assert that the whole Muslim community in the world is a monolithic nation, called ‘Ummah’, irrespective and irrelevant of the national, ethnic, racial and linguistic barriers that divide them. They abhor parliaments and other law-making machinery offered by the Western civilization and want to go back to a presumed golden era that flourished in the seventh or eighth centuries CE when the supposedly Rightly Guided Caliphs ruled from Medina. This book presents the pitfalls inherent in such a ludicrously simplistic evaluation of what ails the Muslims of today. Instead of living in a state of Islam, in which every Muslim is entitled to live peacefully and joyfully as per the fundamental tenets of Islam that cares about the spiritual needs of the individual, Muslims are shepherded to outrageous notions of political supremacy of Islam over other religions of the world and authoritarianism of cleric-politicians as enshrined in an Islamic state. By looking back at the history of Islam and the status of implementation of the Islamic state in a few countries, the author affirms the illusion of an Islamic state that occurred anywhere in the world in the present or in the past. Tarek Fatah is a Pakistani author and journalist based in Canada. He has authored many books. He was an activist in Pakistan, and was twice imprisoned by successive military dictatorships. In the aftermath of 9/11, Fatah founded the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC), a secular and liberal Muslim organization dedicated to the separation of religion and politics, opposition to Islamism and jihadi extremism.

Fatah begins by requesting his Muslim readers to attempt to answer a few questions in the privacy of their solitude, when they need not be on the defensive and have no fear of being judged. Presenting the difference between an Islamic state and a state of Islam, he argues that the 150 million Muslims in Pakistan live in an Islamic state, while an equal number of Muslims in India live in a state of Islam. The author makes a clear distinction between Muslims and Islamists, who work for the imposition of an Islamic state based on Sharia. They have brought out Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in 1990 roughly in line with the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights in 1948. However, the Cairo one envisages all rights and freedoms subject to Sharia, and provides for second class citizenship to the non-Muslims who have the misfortune to live in an Islamic state. It legitimizes the notion of racial and religious superiority and allows for multiple levels of citizenship and widespread and systemic discrimination against racial and religious minorities living within a state’s borders (p. 17). The Liberal-Left is now hand in glove with the Islamists under the untrue impression that they oppose the US and its hegemonic world policy. However, Islamists are not against the West’s imperial ambitions or capitalist greed. They were the West’s handmaidens throughout the cold war and waged a jihad on America’s behalf against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Islamists take sustenance from the writings of Sayyid Abul Ala Maudoodi of the Jamaat Islami and Hassan al-Banna and Syed Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood. Maudoodi had noted that the West’s ‘unfettered freedom’ and individual liberty are to be opposed. This put the leftists in an awkward position.

The book then examines the blatant discrimination present in the Islamic states of Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Palestine. Religious minorities are not given equal status anywhere. Pakistan’s constitution, in its Article 41(2) states that only a Muslim can become its president. When Justice Rana Bhagwandas, a Hindu, was sworn in as acting chief justice of Pakistan, he had to take his oath of office with a Quranic prayer, “May Allah Almighty help and guide me, Ameen”. Imagine such a thing happening to a Muslim anywhere in the secular democracies like India or western countries! Also imagine the tremendous hue and cry such an incident will cause among human rights groups! But in this instance, nothing happened and the seculars turned a blind eye to it. The supreme leader of Iran – velayat e-faqih – can only be a person of Arab ancestry. Imams of the superior pedigree don a black turban while others wear white headgear. He advises the Palestinians to view Islamists with deep suspicion, especially the ones in Marxist attire who espouse support of the Islamist Hamas while living in and unwilling to give up residence or the comforts of the US (p. 74).

Part 2 of the book that deals with the genesis of the faith and its political institutions present the true face of history the Islamists often sweep under the carpet. Three out of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs had fallen victim to an assassin’s knife in an orgy of tribal and racial enmity. After the Prophet’s death, the claim of the Quraysh tribe was proposed by Abu Bakr, who became the first caliph and a member of the tribe. Notions of equality were discarded at that stage itself. The second caliph Omar followed a policy of sabiqa which determined people’s level of piety on a sliding scale of when they accepted Islam. War booty was divided by Omar unequally. Those who followed Muhammad to Medina were given the highest entitlement and the lowest for those who accepted Islam after the fall of Mecca. In the sixth year of Omar’s reign a famine struck Arabia. The relief effort was also based on the principle of graded inequality – Meccan Quraysh the most, then Meccan Arabs, then the Aws tribe of Medina over the Khazraj and the non-Arab Muslims and slaves. The non-Arab Muslims were disparagingly called Mawalis and the Umayyad dynasty of caliphs (661 – 750 CE) taxed Jizya from them as noted by Maudoodi. Sectarian and familial jealousy overruled the early caliphate. Muawiyah instituted the practice of cursing Ali, the Prophet’s son-in-law during Friday sermons, which is still followed during the Hajj pilgrimage (p. 159). The forward thrust of Arab culture into Europe was stopped in 732 CE when Charles Martel defeated the Berber – Arab army in Poitiers, France. Muslims could never cross this line again. When the flow of war booty from expansion subsided, dissensions broke out in the Islamic camp. The Islamic states of the past failed to establish a norm for rightful succession that led to the unhappy situation in which lasting political institutions didn’t develop. Fatah categorically affirms that the idea of the caliphate or Islamic state has no basis whatsoever in either the Quran or the traditions of the Prophet.

The third part of the book is earmarked to expose the deviant agenda of Islamists in the West and their political manifesto. Their agenda is what Maudoodi declared: “Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere in the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam. If the Muslim party commands adequate resources, it will eliminate un-Islamic governments and establish the power of Islamic governments in their stead. (p. 252). Fatah brings to light the backhand deals in Canada in which Islamists tried to sneak in Sharia for the country’s Muslim minority and the true face of Islamic banking which is another front of extremism. The religious bigotry of the Islamists is nauseating. They swing into action only when a Muslim country or individual is attacked. In 1999, New York police intercepted a Black man named Amadou Diallo and shot him down in a case of highhandedness. Civil rights groups began protests but the Islamists kept mum. A few days later, the man’s full name was published in the newspapers as Ahmed Ahmedou Diallo, a Muslim. Islamists took up protests only at that point. In the Vietnam War, they sided with the US government and only join the action when a Muslim state is at the receiving end of US foreign policy.

As I noted earlier, the voice of the moderate Muslim is nowhere heard. This book changes all that, and Tarek Fatah’s lone voice rumbles through the debating bodies as a voice of sincerity and reason. It is to be noted that he never says anything against the Prophet or the Quran, but attacks the false interpretation of the Islamists. Readers open a rich treasure trove of new information from this book that blunts the sharpness of Wahhabi-funded Islamists masquerading as free thinkers and human rights activists. The book uses footnotes instead of attaching a glossary at the end. A veritable collection of Notes and a long list of books for further reading make this a must-have for all classes of readers. A comprehensive index elevates the book to the level of a reference work.

When you grow old, it is rare that you come across a book which gives you a flood of details you never knew existed. Most books show a new sidewalk or an unexplored by-lane to the city centre which you are thoroughly familiar with. But this book showcases an entirely new city, which justifies its Five Star rating.

The book is most highly recommended.

Rating: 5 Star