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| The Hindu Phenomenon |
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RETREAT AND RAGE |
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1856 and 1950, Muslim scholars attached to Islam all the labels
available to them from the West- rationalism, science, nationalism,
democracy and finally socialism. After 1970, the fundamentalist have
come to reject all that. Unlike the revivalists and the reformers,
they are not concerned primarily with rescuing Muslims from
stagnation and ossification. They are possessed by the passion to
reinstate Islam as the bedrock of the ummah in opposition to Western
concepts and values, nationalism being one of them. In that sense,
it is a contemporary reaction to revolutionary nationalism
and relatively secular forms of government as sought to be practised
in several Arab lands under the banner of Arab nationalism
Up to the 1970s, fundamentalism was more of an intellectual current than a serious political movement. Maulana al-Mawdidi is rightly regarded as the initiator of this current. The Iranian revolution in 1979 marked the first major success of the movement. This has been followed by the fundamentalist takeover in Sudan with the help of the army. But it is their sweeping victory at the polls in Algeria in December 1991 that sent warning bells ringing, loud and clear, in the dominant Western world which determines what the rest of us think and do. Growing support for Islamic
fundamentalism completes the era which began with the Prophet's
hijra (flight) to Yathrib (Medina) and the establishment of the
ummah, on the hand, and the retreat of Islamic power, as represented
by the Ottoman empire, that began towards the end of the sixteenth
century, on the other Iran is seeking to reverse this retreat and
inaugurate a new era. |
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