The myths of our history IV: Muslim ‘Character’ in the ‘Golden Age’
Existing ‘Islamic governments’ present us with three alternatives: Saudi Arabian model of hereditary monarchy, Afghanistan’s ‘Taliban’ model to impose the tribal confederacy structure of ancient Arabia and ‘Velayet-e-Faqih’ model prevalent in Iran. None of these systems is adequate for the 21st century
Another historical fallacy that is widely propagated is that Muslim rulers and commanders in the ‘Golden Age of Islam’ were paragons of virtue and purity, like the prophets, and if only we would emulate their character, we would be triumphant. In fact, this myth has been sustained and nurtured by fundamentalist Mullahs who ruled side by side with the kings and emperors of old and still chafe at their loss of influence once monarchies were replaced by elected governments.
If we study our history as history and not as a religious text, we will see that those we venerate as beyond human failings were, in fact, humans with virtues and faults, the same as the vast majority of Muslims today. Muslim historians including Ibn Khaldun have described these qualities of rulers of the past quite objectively. In Baghdad during Abbasid rule, courts and preachers had declared alcohol legal and alcohol, dancing and carousing was quite prevalent in most Muslim kingdoms including the Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Ottoman, Seljuk and others. In fact, many caliphs of those eras died of alcohol related illness. Historians of the middle ages have written in detail about the political intrigues, the internecine bloodshed, the opulence of their courts and their dissolute lifestyles contradicting the laws of the ‘Shariah’ and no one has accused them of maligning ‘Islam’. Their writings clearly demonstrate that most of these rulers were not religiously observant. They drank, enjoyed wine, women and music, had vast harems filled with women and sometimes young men and boys and yet, the religious leaders of the time sang their praises and declared allegiance to the king the same as allegiance to God. In turn, they were awarded pensions, stipends and all kinds of monetary support from the rulers and were an integral part of the machinery of the state. None of them declared this arrangement ‘Un-Islamic’ or spoke out against it.
It was in the 19th and 20th century, once traditional Muslim kingdoms began to disintegrate against the rise of the Industrial powers that Islamic revivalist movements rose up to declare that the character of Muslims of the past was pure and the reason for their ascendancy was that they followed religions teaching strictly and without question, that they were united in ‘Islamic Brotherhood’, that they were ‘above’ ethnic, linguistic or regional loyalties, that they were never greedy or treacherous, that they never drank or lived in opulence or womanized etc etc. Of course the real reason for preaching these fantasies was that with the decline of the Muslim kingdoms and the rise of political governments, the influence of religious leaders had also declined along with their sources of money and support from the state.
The declining feudal landlords, aided by Western powers, were eager to assist in this charade. Religious ‘leaders’, to deceive ordinary people began presenting the history of Islamic Kingdoms as ‘Islamic history’ and blind worship of past glories was part of this deception. In the sub-continent, the leaders of the Deobandi and Nadwah sects were at the forefront of this effort starting from Shibli Nomani through Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, Abul Kalam Azad and Maulana Maududi. Later, the ‘Islamic’ novels of Nasim ‘Hejazi’, M.Aslam etc enlarged and popularized this charade. Part of this was a reaction to Hindu fundamentalists presenting their past Kings and rulers as gods and goddesses. However, this wave of reaction could never address the real life problems of India’s Muslims. That task was left to the modernist, pro-education Aligarh movement of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan which attempted to slash the mental chains that bound Muslims to imaginary past glories. Sir Syed criticized hereditary monarchies in the strongest terms. Syed Ameer Ali, the Indian Muslim jurist, scholar and author wrote a history of the golden period of Muslim history but called it ‘History of the Saracens’ instead of ‘Islamic History’. Muhammad Husain Azad, the author of the masterpiece ‘Aab-e-Hayat’ and considered one of the best Urdu prose writers in his ‘Darbar-e-Akbari’ forcefully rebuffed the criticisms of reactionaries and presented history as separate from religious ideology.
The interesting thing is that Muslim historians of the Middle Ages examined the history of the Kings, Generals and courtiers of their time through the lens of the monarchical system of governance, never confusing it with religious ideology. None of them called their historical works ‘Islamic History’ or ‘History of Islam. Foremost among them was Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabri (838-923 AD) who named his seminal work ‘Tarikh-al-Umum Ma-al-Maluk’ or ‘History of Nations and Kings’. Ibn Khaldun (732-808 AD) called his monumental history ‘Kitab-ul-Ibar’ (full title “"Book of Evidence, Record of Beginnings and Events from the Days of the Arabs, Persians and Berbers and their Powerful Contemporaries"). There are countless other historical narratives by Muslim scholars that never professed to be ‘Islamic’ or ‘Muslim’ history. These authors never stretched the truths to portray Kings or Rulers as unrealistically religious and they took care to separate history from theology. If some of the subjects of their books truly were moral and virtuous people, they were described as such but it was rare to find kings or courtiers in these ranks.
These historians never shirked from pointing out the political struggles, the court intrigues, the internecine bloodshed and massacre of innocents, the luxury and opulence of the court including drinking, womanizing and homosexuality, all associated with the governments of their day. This was how power and wealth were obtained and kept and everyone knew that, therefore, historians felt no need to be apologetic about it. Muslim historians of today feel the need to either erase large periods of this history from their accounts or to describe it apologetically while painting the rulers of the day in the best light as virtuous and incorruptible. In addition, political campaigns to conquer new lands and subjugate people of other areas are presented as their quest to spread the ‘light of Islam’ rather than to add new territories and subjects to their empires. The inevitable massacres of innocents, the enslaving of countless women and children and the looting and bloodshed associated with these campaigns is either glossed over or justified in the name of religion. None of the historians of the past felt the need to justify any of these atrocities because they were the norm in the prevailing systems of exploitative monarchies. Non-Muslim conquerors behaved the same way in their military campaigns.
The Industrial revolution and its global and far reaching social and political effects have forced reactionary Muslim historians to attempt revisions of history to try and convince people that a return to the days of those exploitative monarchies would be a desirable goal. They have declared separation of religion and governance as heresy while it is a historical fact that Muslim monarchs in the ‘golden age’ of Islam practiced strict separation of the two. These clumsy attempts to implement a distorted version of the systems of governance prevalent in the Middle Ages today are futile in the extreme. As far as virtue or morality are concerned, there is no shortage of virtuous, moral and religious people today.
A people’s ascendance or their decline is never connected to their religiosity or lack thereof. This was as true in those days as it is now. Muslims have been attempting to ‘reform’ themselves along religious lines for over 150 years while our actual position in the world continues to decline. Any temporary improvements in that decline have been because of movements that stressed education and modernity and a break with the past. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s Aligarh movement is one example as is the secular leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah who managed to carve out a state in the teeth of Muslim religious opposition. The corrupt and exploitative policies of Pakistani rulers after his early death rapidly exhausted any possibilities that the new state had, forcing those same rulers to rely on the same religious leaders who opposed the formation of Pakistan in the first place. This has led to a steady and inexorable decline which continues to this day.
If we were to study Muslim history as history instead of a religious text and study the leaders, rulers and reformers of our past as fallible humans as historians in the past have done, instead of as super-humans, we could plan a course for the future. It is only then that we can determine concrete goals instead of forever chasing phantoms in the past. The success of Muslim rulers of the past depended on how skillfully and efficiently they negotiated the existing social, economic and political realities of their day without confusing religion and politics. In contrast, we have not even begun to understand, let alone resolve our social and economic problems. The result of obsessive focus on religion is a poisonous inter-religious sectarianism that is consuming our societies from within. The Industrial revolution has ripped apart the social values of the agricultural past and if we are to progress, it will require a concerted struggle against hereditary monarchical governance, social and class inequality, feudal values and religious reaction.
This requires adherence to democratic political values, institutionalization of these values at all government and non-government levels, guarantees of basic human rights and freedom of speech and expression and a firm commitment to modern scientific and artistic values. Only on these bases can societies and governments be designed that will allow us to progress. In contrast, a yearning for the imaginary values that never existed in our golden past can only lead us further down the road to ruin.
In summary, ‘Islamic government’ is an abstract concept. Systems of governance are built on the foundations of material and social conditions and this is true of Muslim governments in the past as well which included initially tribal confederacies and then hereditary monarchies. With the advent of the Industrial revolution and its associated democratic values, Muslim nations, instead of welcoming those changes chose to turn backwards towards an imaginary golden past and cling to the outmoded values it represents. Currently existing ‘Islamic governments’ present us with three alternatives: 1. The Saudi Arabian model of hereditary monarchy, 2. Afghanistan’s ‘Taliban’ model which is a futile attempt to impose the tribal confederacy structure of ancient Arabia and 3. The theocratic ‘Velayet-e-Faqih’ (‘Guardianship of the Jurists’) model prevalent in Iran which is similar to a monarchy except that religious leaders are in direct charge of the government. Every other Muslim country today is ruled by a military or semi-military government where the rights of ordinary citizens are severely curtailed. None of these systems of governance is adequate for the 21st century.
As far as virtuous ‘character’ is concerned, there is no dearth of moral or virtuous people today. In fact, as a proportion of the general population, there are many million more well intentioned and moral people in the world today, Muslim and non-Muslim than existed in the supposed golden past. Instead of wasting our time and energy on such non-issues, we should be concentrating on breaking free of the historical fallacies of the past to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
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The author is a Psychiatrist practicing in Arkansas, USA. Email: |