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| The Hindu Phenomenon |
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RETREAT AND RAGE |
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such, revivalist movements from Sumatra in the east to Nigeria in
the west in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries conducted a
purely internal dialogue, centred on the tenets and prescriptions of
early Islam. "Thus, there was no reference to other systems
of thought, either for comparative purposes or in order to introduce
new elements, and no recognition of the superiority of other
cultures was contemplated."
There was another Muslim response to the West in the ascendant - the reformist response which can be said to have begun with the Tanzimat movement in Turkey at the turn of the century and ended in 1967 with the defeat of Egypt under the leadership of President Abdel Nasser. Nasser, as is well known, had forged the pan-Arab sentiment into a powerful movement which, despite its Islamic trappings, did not look to the supposed golden age of Islam and instead sought to relate itself to the present via close relations with the Soviet Union and other communist countries, and via industrial growth through planning and basic industries in the public sector. The movement was flawed from the start. Pan- Arabism denied the legitimacy of territorial states and introduced an element if adventurism into Egypt's policies. It was too dependent for its legitimacy on hostility to Israel. Planning and heavy investment in public sector enterprises spawned a regime of corruption and failed to produce adequate returns. Even so, it represented a continuation of the reformist impulse. Its failure left the field open to Islamic fundamentalism. |
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