Speaking of Heritage
By Dr Ghulam M. Haniff
St. Cloud, Minnesota
When Muslims built a brilliant civilization that lasted for over a thousand years the entire world was aghast. Foremost among the Muslim achievements was the excellence in science, from eighth to fourteenth centuries, that historians celebrate today as the “Golden Age” of Islam. While many Muslims still pine for that era the followers of Islam are said today to have become a spent force.
Muslims of that time were impelled by the power of learning. They conducted research now mostly forgotten. They translated many major books from the Greeks, Persians, Indians and even Chinese into Arabic.
Those works are now largely forgotten, thrown away or destroyed. In a study published recently by Arab scholars, called the Arab Development, they note that Spain alone has translated more books last year, in one year alone, than the entire Arab world combined during this century!
Around the world Muslim are floundering as never before and are at the mercy of the West. They beg the Western leaders for a little reprieve, though no one listens to the little fakirs from the East. The drone aircrafts freely bomb the targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia but no one is capable of doing anything about it. Iran might be the next target or Syria.
Muslims are ridiculed as never before. Shari’a, the fundamental moral code of Islam, is about to be banned in several states. Oklahoma and Tennessee have taken the lead in that regard. Most Muslims read newspapers only from back home and are ignorant about what is going on in the global society.
Muslims generally can’t stand up for their heritage, their culture or their history. They can’t reach out beyond the circle of their tribes. The global microphone is tenaciously held by the whites. Muslims just can’t snatch it away from them.
They have yet to develop a narrative of their own and a framework for telling their own story. Nobody knows how to polish their style, how to fashion their message and how to tell their history so the world community can understand.
So I was very surprised to see an unusual person who popped up on TV. This individual brings some hope for the future. The person was Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, who appeared on CNN’s GPS program on the first Sunday in October.
She was charming, personable and articulate to the point that the host tried to put her on the defensive. She demonstrated that she was more knowledgeable than the host, pro-Indian Fareed Zakariya, by citing Iceland as an example of a nation with blasphemy laws when the interrogator tried to put Muslims down by giving the example of Saudi Arabia! Shocked, Zakariya’s eyes almost bugged out.
The other individual even more dynamic and forceful who appeared on the CNN GPS program was Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey. He faced the same host, Fareed Zakariya, and set the tone for the conversation. He spoke in Turkish and totally dominated the discussion. He was not about to concede any points to the interrogator and clearly demonstrated his knowledge of the area. He was cool, rational and deliberate in discussing the speech he gave at the General Assembly session of the United Nations.
He clearly demonstrated that he was proud of the Ottoman history, expressed admiration for his heritage, and even of the democratic revolution under Mustafa Kemal.
In that revolution in 1923 Mustafa Kemal demonstrated the significance of education as he went from village to village teaching the peasants to read and write. He was the only Muslim leader who got his hands dirty. The succeeding Turkish leaders followed that up to the point that they have achieved a literacy rate of close to 90 percent. It is the only Muslim country to have risen to level.
However, this is not to detract from the fact that Muslims still have not produced a single scholarly book on their own history. The standard history books, used around the world for teaching Islamic history, are all produced by the scholars in the West. The noted example is Bernard Lewis who has a clever way of dealing with Muslim history. There is no reputable Muslim historian known as yet around the world.
Documents for research remain hidden in libraries, in the colonial capitals of the mother-countries, museums, various collections and under the earth because no one has bothered to dig them up to decipher. In fact, the entire enterprise of archaeological digging is a mystery to the Muslims as Islamic pasts are systematically destroyed by the ruling powers. All of the dictators and tyrants in the Muslim world can be reached for excavation permission through Western rulers such as Obama in the case of Saudi Arabia.
Muslims have yet to master science and technology and are laggards in comparison with Japan, China, South Korea, India or Singapore. However, they have resources galore most of which are systematically squandered.
Neither a mullah nor a political leader seems to be capable of giving a message of hope to the world of Islam. Perhaps, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a rare exception. His speech at the recent meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations was an example of what needs to be done.
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