March 18 , 2011

 

 

The Crisis of Islamic Civilization - A Thought-provoking Book

 

This weighty work of Dr. Ali A. Allawi , who had served in the post-war Iraqi cabinet as Minister of Defense and also as Minister of Finance and who is now a senior fellow at Princeton, is by any standard a highly valuable addition to the literature on the causes of the fall of the Islamic civilization .

Overwhelmed by the Western civilization that is driven forth by science and technology, the Islamic civilization has lost its centripetal force, become too effete and enervated to give credence to Samuel Huntington ’s thesis about its possible clash with the Christian civilization, contends Dr. Allawi.

The crisis in Islamic civilization, maintains Dr. Allawi, arises partly from the fact that it has been thwarted from demarcating its own pathways into contemporary life. The Western mould of modernity has been superimposed on its worldview, and Islam has been unable to relate to the modern world except through this awkward and often painfully alien framework.  But Islam as a religion, he maintains, has never surrendered wholly to the demands of a de-sacralized world of modernity. “Any starting point for revitalizing the world of Islam must begin with Muslims’ connection with the transcendent (divine) reality which lies at the heart of the message of Islam.” Islam’s spiritual landscape, posits the author, has continued to be firmly based on a God-centered perspective of the cosmos, without serious disruption by either temporal or religious powers.

One cannot help gaining the impression that Dr. Allawi attributes the decline of the Islamic civilization to the aggressive advance of Western colonial powers who occupied the Muslim lands and super-imposed their own value systems. 

One may mention here the finding of Prof. Arnold Honeybee, the foremost historian of the 20 th century, that no civilization is ever destroyed by an outside power unless it starts imploding from inside. Deterioration had commenced of the Ottoman Empire after the death of Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566). The Mughal Empire , similarly, started its decline after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707.  I would also like to mention here another finding of Dr. Honeybee: the rise or fall of a civilization depends on the challenge to it and the nature and force of its response.

When a civilization is on the ascent, it keeps pulsating with the spirit of enquiry. It was the spirit of enquiry in the Western lands that led to enlightenment, reformation, industrialization and a premium on scientific enquiry, innovation and technology.  The spirit of enquiry had been suppressed in the Muslim lands giving rise to esoteric rituals, superstitions, and Sufi cadres.  Dr. Allawi believes that Muslims might recapture their lost glory by resorting, inter alias, to mystic practices and development of their spiritual sinews. 

“If Muslims do not muster the inner resources of their faith to fashion a civilizing outer presence”, argues Dr. Allawi, “then Islam as a civilization may indeed disappear…Muslim generation’s encounter with a world dominated first by the West and now increasingly, by impersonal technological and market forces (globalization) will chip away at the possibility of regenerating an Islamic civilization…The much heralded Islamic ‘awakening’ of recent times will not be a prelude to the rebirth of an Islamic civilization, it will be another episode in its decline. The revolt of Islam becomes instead the final act of the end of civilization ”, Dr. Allawi concludes. 

He is perhaps referring to the emergence of clerics’ power in Iran , the Mullah ’s bid for power in Afghanistan and Pakistan , the oil-wealth clout of the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia in particular, the much-heralded Islamization of society in Gen. Zia’s decade-long rule, the independence of Central Asian Muslim states, the Islamic governments in Sudan , Somalia and elsewhere in Africa.  Considering the resort to violence, the suicide bombings in particular, the track record of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan and their hubris of self-righteousness, Dr. Allawi’s pessimistic verdict is not far from the mark.

In the crucial economic field too, Muslim countries lag far behind. They generate a mere 6 per cent of the world wealth, while accounting for 22 per cent of world population. The total GDP of the 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) was $3.2 trillion in 2007, and a mere $1.9 trillion of all the non-oil Islamic countries.

A dynamic economy is predicated on free markets, property rights, rule of law, competition, limited state interference, and more importantly, ‘good governance’.  Most of these elements are missing in the economies of Muslim countries. Some are still under dynastic rule.  The wind of change currently sweeping the Arab states has already toppled the dictatorships of Tunisia and Egypt while it is struggling to uproot the hold of Gaddafi over Libya .

To labor to live well is a missing ethic in several Muslim lands. Dr. Allawi therefore prescribes a system based on ethics.  Zakat should play a crucial role in the economies of Muslim countries. So should other Islamic institutions such as Auqaf and charities. If Zakat was collected from all members of Gulf Cooperation Council, it could render $75 billion for ameliorating the lot of poor Muslim countries. 

Globalization may be the extreme form of Adam Smith ’s laissez faire; it may not have lifted the boats of several Third World countries and forced open their markets in the interest of rich industrial states, it might even  be regarded as the ultimate form of neo-colonialism, but the system has come to stay. Practicality and wisdom dictate that Muslim states, oil exporters in particular, adjust themselves within the constraints of this system.  China had been for centuries inward looking, Japan was an insular power, but both have elected to enter the field of international trade. Both are thriving. Muslim countries will have to come out of the hangover of the ruling hierarchies and enter the field of manufacturing and innovation for sheer survival.

The innovative capacity of the Islamic civilization has dipped to  rock bottom.  The creative output of the 20-30 million Muslims of the Abbasid period dwarf the output of 1.5 billion Muslims of the modern era.  Muslim countries have 8.5 scientists and technicians per 1,000 population compared to the world average of 40.7 and 193.3 in the US and EU. 

Islamic cities were planned and built keeping the religious and cultural mores of the people, argues Dr. Allawi.  The incursion of Europe superimposed an entirely different ordering of the urban space, shattering Islam’s structures and styles of building. 

On visits to the old residential areas of Istanbul, Lahore and Peshawar, I was surprised to find similarities in the architectures dictated by the particular requirements of the Muslim inhabitants especially of the women folk.  All that has disappeared in the modern cities like Islamabad and Ankara, causing a break with the cultural moorings of the past. No one can put the clock back. The Muslim communities will have to adopt the tools of modern life and excel in them to overcome the crisis of backwardness they face. Building spiritual strength, as argued by Allawi, may be a good thing for any society, but it would hardly fill an empty stomach. His book, nevertheless, offers a lot of valuable information and it is a thought provoking work .

                   arifhussaini@hotmail.com