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Democracy, Pluralism and Minority Rights - Part II
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
(Dr. Nazeer Ahmed is the Director of the American Institute of Islamic
History and Culture, located at 1160 Ridgemont Place, Concord, CA 94521.
Dr. Nazeer Ahmed is a thinker, author, writer, legislator and an
academician. Professionally he is an Engineer and holds several Patents
in Engineering. He is the author of several books; prominent among them
is "Islam in Global History." He can be reached by E-mail:
drnazeerahmed1999@yahoo.com )
Democracy is the great slogan of our times. You can package practically
anything under this wrapper, capitalism, socialism, nationalism,
imperialism, you name it. The slogan is a marketing executive's dream
and is next only to religion and motherhood in its appeal to the guts of
the masses. The Tsunami of democratic slogans spares no one. The East
and the West, the haves and the haves not, North and South, the rulers
and the ruled fight their battles under this banner. They justify their
actions and wrap their rhetoric in terms of democracy. It is both a
shield for the oppressed and a dagger for the oppressors. Muslims are no
exception to this rule.
They too justify dictatorships, one-man rule, oppression and
exploitation using the language of democracy. For some time it was
fashionable to use the terms "Islamic democracy" and "Social democracy".
The qualifiers have now been dropped but democracy is nonetheless the
guiding star, the North Pole of Muslim rhetoric. We continue our brief
review of how Muslims have historically faced up to the issue of
governance. The laws regulating the life of the community and of the
relationship between the ruler and the ruled were established very early
in Islamic history. The legacy of the early Companions was the Khilafat
but soon this institution was turned into a de-facto dynasty.
The ruler was the "Malik" and the ruled were the "Riyaya". Both terms
have their origin in the Qur'an. While the term Malik is often used, the
term Riyaya appears to have its origin in Suratul Baqra, Ayat 104, and
seems to connote a meaning similar to "shepherd". Although there is
disagreement about the origin of this term, it appears that the term "Riyaya"
came into political usage in the social context of the Middle East where
a large portion of the population consisted of shepherds or was involved
in this trade. The term "Sultan", which gradually replaced the term "Malik",
is of a later historical origin and was the result of Seljuk Turkish
irruption in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In previous installments
we examined how consultative democracy, pluralism and minority rights
were dealt with in the period of Omar ibn al Khattab and Omar bin Abdul
Azeez. Here we examine the reign of Harun al Rashid and the turbulent
times of Nasiruddin al Tusi. Harun al Rashid (d 809 CE) was a
Mu'tazalite. In fact, he was a Mu'tazalite par excellence. The Caliph al
Mansur had embraced the Mu'tazalite doctrines in 765 CE and made it the
state ideology.
The darul hikmah was established in Baghdad and had been in full
operation for twenty-one years before Harun ascended the throne. The
books of Aristotle, Plato, Galen, the Indian mathematics of Aryabhatta
and Chinese technology of papermaking and kaolin were introduced into
the capital. The empire extending from Spain to the borders of China was
at peace with itself. Harun, avoiding the lure of further conquests, set
out to consolidate the empire and rule with justice. He sent ambassadors
to Charlemagne of France and the Tang emperor of China, stabilized his
borders and turned his attention to internal governance of the state. It
was during this period that three of the four Sunnah schools of fiqh,
the Hanafi, Maliki and Shafi', as well as the Shi' Jafariya school of
fiqh, were consolidated. The application of the Shariah was codified in
accordance with the demands of the times and rights and responsibilities
of Muslims and non-Muslims were elaborated. The fourth school of Sunah
fiqh, namely the Hanbali, did not emerge until a generation after Harun
and was largely a reaction to the Mu'tazalite excesses. The Mu'tazalites
were rationalists, and as such applied Greek logic and Greek philosophy
to the problems of the state.
As champions of the deductive method, they were not different from the
philosophers of today. However, there is no evidence to indicate that
their patronage of Greek philosophy made them embrace Greek democracy.
Harun, despite his piety and his open mindedness remained the "Malik",
the owner and defender of the realm, which was to be bequeathed to his
sons upon his death. While the rational techniques was applied with
vigor to secular and sacred issues alike, the Abbasids were not prone to
adopt the Greek method of elected governance, give up their privileges
and hand over the reigns of state to a consultative or elected body of
legists. The Zoroastrians and the Christians in the empire continued to
pay the Jizya, the Muslims their zakat and agricultural taxes, the
division between Darul Islam and Darul Harab hardened further, and no
attempt was made to extend the principles of fiqh to Muslims living in
non-Muslim lands. This situation continued for more than four hundred
years thereafter. Historical Islam remained pluralistic but exclusive.
The embrace of ijtihad did not extend to lands where the khalifa was not
acknowledged as the supreme temporal and spiritual authority. It was
left to a non-legist, a scientist by training, to take on this
monumental task. It is the historical good fortune of Muslims that some
of the most far- reaching ideas have emerged from outside the circles of
muftis and religious establishments. Nasiruddin al Tusi (d 1274) was one
such great savant. Born into distinguished family of Tus in Persia,
Nasiruddin received his early education from scholars who were fleeing
the Mongol onslaught. The times were hard indeed. The hordes of Gengiz
Khan had descended from the heights of Mongolia (1219) and had
devastated a vast swath of territories extending from Amu Darya to the
Tigris. What was left was leveled by his grandson Hulagu Khan who sacked
Baghad in 1258 and trampled the last Abbasid Khalifa al Musta'sim under
Mongol horses. Centers of learning were razed to the ground, libraries
burned and scholars enslaved. It was not until 1262 when the Mongols
were stopped at the battle of Ayn Jalut near Jerusalem by Sultan Baybars
of Egypt. Nasiruddin al Tusi thus lived under the Mongols.
The governing law of the land was the Mongol Rasa, not the Islamic
Shariah. It was in its darkest hour that the creative genius of Islam
triumphed. An outburst of emotive spiritual energy from the great Sufi
Shaikhs converted the Mongols and propelled Islam into the farthest
corners of the Indian subcontinent, into Indonesia, Malaysia and
sub-Saharan Africa. Nasiruddin was valued by the Mongols for his
astronomical knowledge. He was the inventor of the 2-axis gimbal (used
in modern space applications) and the formulator of the Tusi couple in
mathematics. However, his primary contribution to Islamic civilization
was his treatise, Akhlaq e Nasiri, a compendium of ethical edicts
emanating from Sufi ethos and Shariah applications. He knew that when
the governing authority was non-Muslim, the Shariah was non-enforceable.
But Nasiruddin's genius was in using the Shariah as the sap that
produces the fruit of good character, namely, akhlaq.
It was akhlaq, applicable in Islamic and non-Islamic milieu alike, not
the cut and dry application of fiqh, that was the essence of Islamic
life. Nasiruddin al Tusi's work took Islamic civilization away from its
singular emphasis on fiqh and opened up new horizons for human
civilization. His vision was transcendental. Without compromise, he
incorporated the essence of the Shariah into akhlaqh and enabled Muslims
to lead an Islamic life in a non-Islamic hostile milieu. The impact of
akhlaq e Nasiri on history was no less profound than the ethics of
Confucius. His treatise formed the basis of Mogul rule in India and
enabled the Great Moguls to create a synthesis of a pluralistic
Hindustani culture which was open to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Its
products included the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort, the Badshahi Masjid,
Hindustani music and poetry and the Urdu language. Nasiruddin al Tusi
was perhaps the only genius who made a determined attempt to create an
intellectual space wherein Islam could breathe, survive and prosper even
if the environment was hostile. His book was required reading in Mogul
schools, for all subjects, Hindus and Muslims alike.
As we shall see, the very success of al Tusi's work in the Mogul courts
produced a counter reaction, which swung the pendulum back in the
direction of a strict application of fiqh. The doors to a pluralistic
culture which honored the rights of minorities and majorities alike were
shut. Historically, fiqh has marked the reach as well as the limits of
Islamic civilization. These limits were tested only once, but in the
absence of ijtihad, the walls of fiqh proved to be inelastic and Islamic
civilization was thrust back into its comfort zone, with fiqh as the
sole barometer of Islamic life.
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