Revitalizing
the Ummatic Paradigm
By Humaira Masihuddin
Islamabad, Pakistan
Whereas
the recent events in the Middle East have revealed
a number of issues that the Muslim world is either
unable or unwilling to solve, the one vital issue
that is worth discussing today is the complete disregard
and disuse by the Muslim world of a major Islamic
concept related to nationhood; the concept of the
Ummah or the Ummatic paradigm.
As one reads newspapers and watches analysts on
TV talking endlessly of “The Arab World”,
“The Arab Street” and “The Arab
leaders” one wonders if the concept of the
Ummah is irretrievably lost. The reality is that
nothing could be further from the truth. In fact
the spirit of Pan Islamism is alive and kicking
all over the Muslim world at a very fundamental
level. The question therefore is why the leaders,
media persons and opinion makers shy away from articulating
this spirit. This great disconnect is the result
of a fractured polity within each and every Muslim
sub-culture where the leadership is not based on
popular public support but rather serves vested
interests in many cases and indeed foreign and alien
interests in others. Their continued ignorance and
silence regarding the Ummatic paradigm has resulted
in a near complete demise of the concept in the
press and the media.
This article then is a 101, an introductory course
on the Ummatic paradigm. Is there such a thing as
the Ummatic paradigm; was it ever a reality; and
is it still a viable, workable concept?
First of all, what does the word Ummah stand for?
The word Ummah comes from the Arabic word Umm which
means Mother, so it really means the mother nation
(The nation of believers in Islam) but research
shows that there are other political dimensions
of this word as well.
Article 17 of Meesaq e Madeenah (The constitution
of Madina) states that the Jews of Bani Awf are
one Ummah with the Muslims while the same article
expressly recognizes the separateness of the religions
of the two communities. But obviously common cause
binds them together here which also speaks volumes
of the political magnanimity embedded in the truly
Islamic system. It can easily be deduced that communities
living, working and collaborating together form
an Ummah. In fact in the early years of Islam an
incident took place wherein the Byzantines, who
were Christians, fought a war with pagans and lost.
The pagans of Makkah rejoiced but the Muslims were
saddened by the defeat of the Christians who had
a different faith but were believers nevertheless.
This and other incidents show that the Ummatic paradigm
may be stretched at the intellectual level and has
many wonderful dimensions based on people coming
together for common cause.
But generally speaking in the last 1400 years, when
we talk of the Ummah, we talk of the Muslim Nation
or the Super Nation to which belong all the little
sub-groups or sub-nations. At the core of this concept
among other issues is the issue of identity. Each
individual in the Muslim world has a number of identities
vis a vis citizenship, profession, language and
political leanings. But the Ummatic paradigm urges
the Muslims to give transcendence to the greatest
overreaching identity within these competing identities;
religion which really means that the members of
the Ummah have a baseline common ideology which
binds them in such a way that it transcends all
other loyalties, identities and positions.
An interesting event from the early years of Islam
illustrates the above argument well. Once, a group
of companions of the Prophet (PBUH) were talking
about what now seems the issue of identity. Each
would have his turn and say he was so and so the
son of so and so, till it was Salman Farsi’s
turn and he said, “I am Salman, the son of
Islam” which made Umar respond immediately,
“I am Umar, the son of Islam.”
The Ummatic Paradigm urges its adherents to be proud
not of lineage, but ideology; not because that ideology
will give them an elitist status but because it
is an ideology based on righteousness and propriety;
Justice and Truth.
The Ummatic Paradigm was opposed and sneered at
even during the time of the Prophet by the Hypocrites
of Madinah, the fifth column so to speak, who time
and again tried to be divisive of the polity. There
were attempts to draw away the Roman, African and
the Persian Sahabah from the Ummah by these hypocrites
on the basis of nationality. But it was really the
last century which dealt a big blow to the Paradigm
politically. With the demise of the Caliphate which
was a single political authority as far as giving
fatwas and declaring Jihad was concerned, it was
an uphill task to keep the banner of the Ummah aloft.
But a few brave and intellectually far sighted leaders
did just that; among them were Jamal uddin Afghani,
Allama Iqbal, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah,
Sir Sultan Muhammad Agha Khan, Ameer Ali and in
recent times Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. And so we see
that despite being colonized and beleaguered, there
have been some amazing manifestations of the Ummatic
Paradigm in the Muslim world. I would like to share
with the readers some of these great stories.
When the British and the Turks went to war during
World War I, a Bengali Unit of the British army
staged mutiny, and from officer to the last man,
every man refused to fight the Turks. The British
put this brave Bengali Unit on a small boat without
food to drift away at sea and die but they were
subsequently saved.
Another inspiring story comes to us from the ashes
of the Iran-Iraq conflict. In this war which lasted
for ten years, a border town of Iran called Khurramshehr
was bombarded by the Iraqis incessantly, but on
the eve of the first Gulf War when the crew of a
western television station visited Khurramshehr
and asked the residents whose side they were on,
the Iranis replied in a stunning display of pan
Islamism that they were on the side of Iraq.
Pakistan till recently was a manifestation of The
Ummatic Paradigm. Right from its very inception
and even before, Pakistan and the Muslim League’s
policies were founded on the said paradigm of Muslim
Unity. The Indonesian leaders had asked the president
of Muslim League Mr Mohammad Ali Jinnah for support
during the freedom struggle in Indonesia. Quaid
i Azam appealed to the Muslims for the support of
this cause and sent 600 soldiers to fight for it.
The majority of these soldiers were martyred during
the fight for freedom. The Indonesian government
published a book entitled ‘The Six Hundred
Brave Pakistani Soldiers’. In 1948 when Holland
attacked Indonesia, Pakistan suspended KLM’S
license to operate from Pakistan in a show of solidarity.
In 1965 Indonesia’s president Sukarno told
the chiefs of the Armed Forces to give away all
the equipment Pakistan required keeping only the
bare minimum for Indonesia. The support for Cypress
extended by the visionary Bhutto is well known as
well. So we can conclude that the Ummatic Paradigm
has been a functional operational reality in the
past without any detriment to the Muslim world;
in fact the opposite can be argued.
Critics say that was then and this is now. The concept
is not a viable one any more. But on the other hand
the proponents of the Ummatic Paradigm argue that
the EU has most amply displayed that the said paradigm
is practical and achievable for they have operationalized
it in our modern times most brilliantly. The EU
bases its membership not just on geographical unity
but also, and most importantly, on certain ideological
practices. European countries which do not conform
to this ideology and certain practices in governance
etc cannot join the EU. The United States and Israel
along with United Kingdom can also be seen as an
Ummah with a common ideology and common agenda and
goals. Why is the Muslim Intellectual shying away
from this most practical and needful paradigm? The
Muslims have a common belief and certain derivative
beliefs and positions regarding justice and peace.
They must speak and act as one voice. This is the
defining moment for the Muslims. They have no choice.
They must get up and revitalize the Ummatic Paradigm.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
