THE decline of Muslim political power after the death of the last great Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb Alamgir (1658-1707 A.D.), created many political, social and religious problems for Indian Muslim society. Indian Muslims had enjoyed privileges during the Mughul rule in India, but with its decline, they gradually lost their special status.

According to Allama Iqbal, the year 1799 was extremely important in the history of the world of Islam. In this year fell Tipu Sultan and his defeat meant the shattering of Muslim hopes for political rejuvenation in India. In the same year was fought the Battle of Navarneo which saw the destruction of the Turkish naval fleet.

Prophetic were the words of the author of the chronogram of Tipu’s fall which visitors of Serangapatam find engraved on the wall of Tipu’s mausoleum “Gone is the glory of Hind as well as of Roum.” Thus in the year 1799, the political decay of Islam in Asia reached its climax. But just as out of the humiliation of Germany on the day of Jena arose the modern German nation, it may be said that out of the political humiliation of Islam in the year 1799 arose Modern Islam and its problems.

During the War of Independence of 1857, Muslims suffered heavily at the hands of the British and after their suppression began a period of systematic persecution and political annihilation of the Muslims all over the country. “By the end of the Mutiny” says Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, “The Mussalmans, high and low, were brought down by these series of events to the lowest depths of broken pride, black despair, and general penury. Without prestige, without education and without resources, the Muslims were left to compete with the Hindus. The British, who pledged neutrality, were indifferent to the result of this struggle between the two communities. The result was that the Mussalmans were completely worsened in the struggle.”

In times of crisis, nations somehow produce men to pull them through. Ability to do so is the evidence of the vitality of a nation. Indeed a reformer of outstanding merit with a breadth of vision, and insight into the true spirit of Islam was the need of the day. Mohammad Iqbal fulfilled this role to a remarkable degree. He possessed all these qualities and performed this duty quite successfully.

Like Rumi, Iqbal refused to be shaken by the pall of gloom which hung over the world of Islam. His stay in England and Germany in the first decade of the twentieth century made him painfully conscious of the ruthless materialism of the West on the one hand, and the lengthening shadows of imperialism on the other.

As a thinker, Iqbal deserves to be included among the greatest philosophers of the Islamic World. “If ever there was a Poet Philosopher, it was Iqbal” says Professor Arberry. It was Iqbal alone among all the contemporary thinkers who succeeded most in persuading Indian Muslims of getting rid of their apathy and pursuing the path of liberty and glory.

Endowed with the gift of poetry, Iqbal decided to put it to good use. He used his poetry as a vehicle to convey his message. The paramount question before him was how to approach the younger generation of Islam, which was not properly indoctrinated.

Iqbal thought that with the reawakening of Muslims, it was necessary to examine in an objective manner what Europe had debated and how far the conclusions reached by it would help in the revision and, if necessary, reconstruction of theological thought in Islam.

He wanted to convince all that Islam strived for promoting the advancement of science and technology and exploitation of nature in the service of mankind. He commented “in the past centuries, no difference had arisen in the principles enunciated by Islam. Due to the advancement of science in the present age and the knowledge gathered in different spheres of life as a result thereof it has become necessary to know the basic principles of Islam.”

Iqbal elaborated: “Islam in my opinion is the only positive system that the world possesses today, provided the Muslims apply themselves to it and rethink the whole thing in light of modern ideas. The Indian Muslim in my opinion is likely to play a very important role in the future of Islam. New Islam relies more on the younger generation which has received more education with necessary grounding in religion.

His conception of Islam was certainly different from the commonly accepted orthodox view. To Iqbal, Islam meant reverence for one’s higher self and a passion for socially useful and creative work. He totally refused to believe that a man who did not respect his ideal self or lacked the creative urge to enrich humanity could be called a Muslim.

Iqbal was opposed to the blind imitation of Western ideas, but he exhorted people to adopt its spirit of research and urged for harnessing the forces of nature. Iqbal sought to lead the Muslims back on the path of Islamic glory which would link them with the time of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and the Pious Caliphs.

In fact, Iqbal combined in his teachings, the spirituality of the East and dynamism of the West and this to him was the real Islam. Giving a brief account of the expansion of Islam, Iqbal said. “The history of Islam tells us that the expansion of Islam as a religion is in no way related to the political power of its followers. The greatest spiritual conquests of Islam were made during the days of our political decrepitude. When the rude barbarians of Mongolia drowned in blood the civilization of Baghdad in 1258 A.D., when Muslim power fell in Spain, and the followers of Islam were mercilessly killed or driven out of Cordova by Ferdinand in 1236, Islam had just secured a footing in Sumatra and was about to work for the peaceful conversion of the Malay Archipelago.”

It is interesting to note that in the hours of its political degradation, Islam achieved some of its most brilliant conquests. On two great historical occasions, infidel barbarians set their foot on the neck of the followers of the Prophet: the Seljuk Turks in the eleventh and the Mongols in the thirteenth century, and in each case, the conquerors ended up accepting the religion of the conquered.

After the destruction of Baghdad in 1258, this advancement of knowledge was stagnated and the doors of ijtihad were closed, which ultimately left the Muslims behind. Allama Iqbal describes this in these words:

“During the last five hundred years, religious thought in Islam has been practically stationary. There was a time when European thought received inspiration from Islam. The most remarkable phenomenon of modern history, however, is the enormous rapidity with which the world of Islam is spiritually moving towards the West. There is nothing wrong in this movement, for European culture, on its intellectual side, is only a further development of some of most important phases of the culture of Islam. Our only fear is that the dazzling exterior of European culture may arrest our movement and we may fail to reach the true inwardness of that culture. During all the centuries of our intellectual stupor, Europe has been seriously thinking on the great problems in which the philosophers and scientists of Islam were so keenly interested.”

Allama Iqbal further states: “The political fall of Islam in Europe unfortunately took place, roughly speaking, at the moment when Muslim thinkers began to see the futility of deductive science and were fairly on the way to building inductive knowledge. It was practically at this time that Europe took up the task of research and discovery. Intellectual activity in the world of Islam practically eased from this time and Europe began to reap the fruits of the labours of Muslim thinkers.”

Describing the ignorance of the Muslims in the same letter, Iqbal says:

“The ignorance of the Mussalmans of today is so great that they consider thoroughly anti-Islamic what has in the main arisen out of the bosom of their culture.”

“In all the Muslim countries, Muslims are either fighting for their liberty or thinking about the Islamic laws (except in Iran and Afghanistan). But in these two countries also, sooner or later, this question is bound to come up. It is a matter of regret that the Muslim jurists are either ignorant of modern trends or stick to their conservation... In my view Islam is being tested by the modern age.”

We may say that Allama Iqbal was a prominent thinker of the modern Islamic world, who not only played a great role in reawakening the Muslims in India but at the same time contributed towards Islamic resurgence in the light of the modern philosophical concepts.

The writer is director of the Quaid-i-Azam Academy,

Karachi.

AS if tensions created by rupture over Iraq were not enough, European Union’s efforts to set up an independent military structure outside Nato are likely to further widen the gulf of differences between the United States and its western allies.

The latest dispute has more profound and far-reaching implications for trans-Atlantic relationship than the name calling over the Iraq war. Decisions taken in the coming months about Europe’s military ambitions will not only shape the political geography of an expanded European Union (EU) but also determine the future of Nato.

The dispute started after the tripartite summit in Berlin in September when Britain sought to patch up its strained relations with France and Germany by supporting plans for more European cooperation on defence. When European leaders met recently at Brussels to negotiate a new constitution for an expanded EU, raising its membership from the current 15 to 25 states in 2004, they also discussed how to make European defence more effective and independent. This led to the U.S. calling an extraordinary Nato meeting to challenge the creation of a new defence and security structure for the European Union.

Nicholas Burns, US ambassador to Nato warned the EU, in no uncertain terms, that his country had serious misgivings about the EU’s military ambitions. He was particularly unhappy that Britain — once opposed to any non-NATO based European defence cooperation — was now willing to work more closely with its EU allies in improving defence structure and military capabilities of Europe. Independent EU defence represents “one of the greatest dangers to trans-Atlantic relationship,” warned Mr. Burns.

Washington’s growing unease at EU defence moves actually reflects tensions in relations between the United States and what defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld once derisively called “old Europe”. The US sees any future EU defence structure as a potential competitor to Nato and an attempt to undermine Atlantic alliance and strike at American influence and primacy. The United States has so far used Nato as the most effective way to keep western powers in step over military and security issues.

The most interesting aspect of the new development is that British prime minister Tony Blair sits awkwardly at the centre of the storm; this time, though, the winds are taking him to Europe. Washington’s unhappiness with Tony Blair began with the Berlin meeting in September between British prime minister, Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder and France’s Jacques Chirac.

The agenda for this meeting went far beyond EU defence; the real significance of the Berlin meeting was that it discussed the issue in its wider strategic context and led to political commitments by Europe’s three most important leaders. Their talks marked the beginning of an historic effort by Messrs Chirac, Schroeder and Blair to set the direction of European Union after next year’s expansion, with the admission of ten new member countries. The three leaders agreed that Europe must be better able to project its military force; and to that end, Mr. Blair indicated that he was ready to add more substance to the bilateral defence accord struck with Chirac at St. Malo in 1998.

British role is crucial in any European defence planning and structure. As French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin has graphically put it: “There will be no Europe without European defence — and no European defence without Britain.” In a speech recently shown on BBC television, the French foreign minister further acknowledged that France needed Britain to build a credible European military strategy. Washington was taken aback by media reports that Mr. Blair had agreed to a statement proposed by Germany that EU should be able to “plan and conduct operations without recourse to Nato resources.”

Officials in Downing Street and the UK ministry of defence, according to British press reports, have ,however, insisted that such claims are an “over-ambitious interpretation” by German diplomats. Seeking to reassure Washington, Mr.Blair recently told EU summit “NATO is the basis and corner-stone of our defence.” He also underlined that he was a “staunch ally and friend” of the United States. Mr. Blair went on to argue that there was nothing wrong with the EU developing its own military planning capacity for operations that Washington did not wish to undertake, but the EU must not set up separate military command structure.

France and Germany are not likely to give up their defence ambitions. Nor are they likely to be discouraged by Britain’s dilly dallying because they firmly believe that EU, after its expansion next year, is destined to play a global role and it cannot hope to be taken seriously unless it has a military arm. That ambition necessarily implies acting independently of Nato both in Europe and abroad.

Proponents of Europe’s military independence argue that the Pentagon has treated the trans-Atlantic alliance with scarcely disguised contempt in the aftermath of September 11,2001. They think it is time Europe took command of its destiny in the diplomatic as well as military domain.

The argument about European defence is not a new one. The US attitude has been ambivalent on this issue. On the one hand it has been arguing , and rightly, that Europe must bear more of the collective security burden, on the other, it is unhappy over Franco-German plan for European defence. Washington suspects that Paris has a hidden agenda to gradually strengthen EU’s military capabilities so that it eventually moves away from Nato. It is more than likely that building of European defence will not be without a price. If EU leaders seek to build defence structure independent of Nato, the United States may decide to withdraw into resentful unilateralism which may lead to American detachment from the various multilateral bodies set up after the Second World War.

The real reason for the US furore at efforts to create a credible European defence, independent of Nato, is that Washington does not want to encourage the emergence of a new pole of power that could become a potential rival to the US. This has been one of the central points of American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. As Dean Acheson, then secretary of state, put it : Americans wanted to preclude western Europe from “becoming (a)third force or opposing force.”

It may be recalled that the United States did not like Charles de Gaulle’s efforts to do something about American supremacy by building an independent French nuclear force. We may recall the eloquent words of President John F. Kennedy, giving vent to US concerns: “If the French and other European powers acquire a nuclear capability, they would be in a position to be entirely independent and we might be on the outside looking in.”

The above explains why Washington has never wanted a western Europe of equal power because such a Europe could follow policies that might clash with US interests. This also explains the current US opposition to Franco-German efforts to set up an independent military structure outside NATO.

The real cause of tensions in trans-Atlantic relations is that Washington, under the Bush doctrine, appears to believe that American hegemony is an unchallengeable fact of international life while the EU believes it is not.

The real purpose of building an independent EU military capability is to create a European pole of power to balance the US in a multi-polar international system. If that happens, Mr. Bush will be remembered for galvanizing international opposition to American supremacy.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

SOME questions indispensable to orderly conduct of the business of the state long settled by other civilized societies are still being debated by Pakistan in the 56th year of its existence. Besides the perennial controversy on the form of government and the place of religion in politics, the questions which of late have come under discussion with renewed vigour concern the relationship of the state authority (central and provincial) with the local councils and, secondly, whether the army and judiciary should be spared the slander, or even the reproach, which is freely heaped on the politicians, civil servants, businessmen, theologians and all the rest in a democratic polity.

Impetus to this debate has come from General Musharraf’s newfangled concept of democracy, the excessive and continuous involvement of the army and its intelligence services in the civil life and, secondly, by some verdicts of the superior judiciary and the conduct of its judges and counsels.

The denunciation of the new floundering order, seldom free of factional bias or personal rancour, is getting so unseemly that it might permanently impair the image and substance of those national institutions which by their charter, and in public expectation, are expected to remain above politics. The judiciary and the army stand at the head of these institutions. A last- ditch effort must be made to keep both out of political fray, keeping aside all other considerations, if the individual rights and public order are not to become altogether extinct.

Musharraf’s ideas of legal and administrative reforms arose, it is now apparent, out of self-delusion rather than ingenuity. Having dislodged the politicians and acting sternly against the most powerful among them, he felt vulnerable once the normal conditions returned and elections were held. Yet his thoughts on devolution of power and checks and balances at the top were persuasive and could have given the country political stability and checked corruption.

But the schemes and laws his advisers and bureaus enacted have, instead, plunged the political process into chaos which is best illustrated by the London Economist’s headline on its recent comment on Pakistan: “Political gloom makes economic optimism hard to sustain.” It is indeed a freak phenomenon for the economy and poverty to grow hand in hand.

The new political and administrative system Musharraf has given to the country (mercifully he left the economic system untouched) is contained in the Legal Framework Order, the Local Government Ordinance and the Police Order. It is a measure both of their unacceptability and impracticability that though promulgated more than a year ago neither law has been able to take hold. That alone is a justification enough for their review or repeal keeping aside for the moment the merits of the laws and egos of the individuals who made them.

The persisting constitutional stalemate which keeps the foreign and even our own investors away and the people distracted and unemployed can be broken, it is now clear, only by the intervention of the Supreme Court. More than a year of noisy wrangle in the parliament and unprincipled negotiations out of it has led only to snarls and fist fights ending up in a charge of inciting mutiny against the most vocal of the opposition leaders. all the future planning is for protest and not for work.

Though the order of the Supreme Court which enabled the president (then the chief executive) to amend the Constitution is in itself controversial yet, in the absence of a political agreement, there is no other choice but to go back to the Supreme Court for a clarification whether the LFO transgresses the limits it laid down. The ensuing order may be no less controversial than its parent but it will provide a legal, if not a political basis, for the parliament to remain in session and wait to seek the people’s verdict on the LFO in the next election which one can see coming sooner than four years. Meanwhile, the Court’s clarification could win the ruling coalition either new adherents to function effectively or to lose even its slender majority to make way for a new one. This government, in any case, has run into the sand.

A better and more sensible course to follow, of course, would be to hold fresh elections straightaway but that couldn’t be the wish of the members whether supporting the LFO or opposing it. Most of them know they wouldn’t be able to make it back, so disgusted are the people with their shenanigans at the expense of the public time and money.

Ironically, though the parliament itself is degenerate and in disarray, it is the only forum the people can look up to rescue and reform the other threatened institutions more particularly the judiciary and the army. The courts have been so brazenly brought into contempt by the legal fraternity itself that the law of contempt has all but ceased to exist. Some lawyers refuse to recognize a chief justice while others march through the court corridors in his favour.

Cynically, the judges are taken to be the allies of the army for the superior courts, historically, have upheld every coup d’ etat. The only time they didn’t was when the military ruler (Yahya Khan) was already dead who in fact had not staged a coup but power was handed to him by a faltering Ayub Khan through a public broadcast. But then it is the politicians who have made the generals and judges into allies in the power game.

Whatever the afterthought or later denunciations, the historical fact is that the people welcomed every coup. Such was the bedlam created by the politicians in the assemblies and on the streets and so blatant was their mal-administration that the generals appeared as saviours.

Today if it is not martial law in the country but just a military president it is more for fear of censure by the international community rather than its own people. The ingredients of a martial law are all there for the army to act and the judges to justify. Yet it would be a misfortune if it comes for, the experience has shown, while the army can restore order it cannot give a new one.

The nature and aspirations of the politicians of Pakistan show no sign of change. Whoever among them gets an opportunity is ready to use the military ladder to climb up to the power he cannot get through popular vote. Ziaul Haq found his “opening batsman” in Raja Zafrul Haq, Musharraf in Chaudhry Shujaat. If and when the next coup maker comes, the “Muslim League Eleven” will again line up for selection.

The present lot of parliamentarians, thus, should give a detached thought to Musharraf’s National Security Council or a like device to forestall active and prolonged military interventions (which look inescapable) with low level constant surveillance which they undoubtedly need.