 |
| The
Hindu Phenomenon |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RETREAT
AND RAGE
|
|
|
Trouble
arises because while the ummah cannot throw up and sustain a
directing or even a coordinating centre, it robs different groupings
of the right to manage their affairs as independent political
entities. That so ancient a people as the Egyptians should have
abolished the very name of their country at one stage speaks for
itself. Egypt continued to be called the United Arab Republic even
after the union with Syria arranged in 1958 had been dissolved in
1960.. Equally significant, it went to war with Israel in 1967 and
invited disaster upon itself for a cause - Palestine -which was not
specifically Egyptian. Today, Iranians are ready to put their future
at risk in search of leadership of the ummah, because the Islamic
revolution derives its legitimacy from that search. We can hear
echoes of the Kremlin-comintern debate in the Islamic vocabulary in
Tehran. Turkey, on the other hand, can be said to have opted for an
independent destiny since the abolition of the caliphate in 1924. In
its case, the pull of Europe may prove stronger than that of Islam.
But such an outcome is by no means assured in view of the rising
appeal of political or radical Islam there too. The hitherto
dominant pan-Turkish sentiment has also begun to stir as a result of
the rise of independent Muslim states in Central Asia in the wake of
the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
|
|
[ Back ] [ Hindu Phenomenon ] [ Up ] [ Next ]
|
|
|
|
