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| The Hindu Phenomenon |
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RETREAT AND RAGE |
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causes for the failure of liberal reformism should be obvious to
students of Islam. The reinterpretation of key concepts like shura,
ijma, and ijtihad involved an attempt to ignore the history of
Islam. It was an exercise in make-believe which could never succeed.
The principle of liberty cannot possibly be reconciled to the
reality of the ummah and the belief in the Koran being the immutable
word of God to be taken in the literal sense; shura (consultation)
was a pre-Islamic tribal institution which has not figured in Muslim
history which has throughout been dominated by despotic rulers; the
alternative has been anarchy, for such is the structure of Muslim
society.
Indeed, that has been the rationale
for the dominant ulema view that the worst kind of ruler is better
than none. Thus when fascism and Nazism rose in Europe in the wake
of the First World War, liberalism quickly lost ground in West Asia.
This is a long story which is not material to the present
discussion. The pertinent point for us to note is that this trend
culminated in military takeovers in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Indonesia
and Algeria in the post-war period. With the exception of Indonesia,
these regimes sought inspiration from the Soviet Union and communist
China, which had replaced Nazi Germany and militarist Japan as the
powerful opponents of the West. They too failed to deliver and it is
this failure that has facilitated the rise and spread of
fundamentalism. |
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