Mysticism in Islam

For a spiritually enlightened mind, capable of direct communication with God, the 'angelic' trait (malakuti, in Sufistic terms) has to be developed by distancing oneself, momentarily or temporarily, from the physical state of being.

A perfect person (Marde Kaamil) is one who lives in the physical state, like all ordinary human beings, and yet can lift himself out of it whenever the situation so demands.

Prophets alone are such perfect persons, and a sweeping look at the events immediately preceding the apostleship of the three founding Prophets of Abraham's monotheism in the world will substantiate the statement.

It was only after detaching themselves, in the initial stage, from the material environs that the Messengers of God were granted prophethood as also super-human powers - spiritual and mental - to face and in the end, subdue the earthly powers that had corrupted society and nurtured an unjust and iniquitous social order in their spheres of authority in their times.

According to the Bible, Prophet Moses "stayed on Mount Sinai with the Lord for forty days and nights, eating and drinking nothing. He wrote on the Tablets the words of the Covenant - the Ten Commandments" (Exodus 34:28).

Jesus Christ too, "when the Devil led him into the desert, fasted and after forty days and nights without food he was hungry... Then the angels came and helped him" (Mathews 3-4:2-11).

Similarly, according to all accounts, Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) used to retire to the solitude of the cave of Hera in the foothills of his native city for months, meditating day in and day out in search for the Truth (Haque) till the 'light' came to him and, some time earlier, "his bosom was opened up and the burdensome weight that had bent his back was removed" (Quran 94:1-3).

Imam Ghazali, who is recognized as an eminent Sufi and an equally eminent philosopher, holds that "Prophets rank higher than ordinary humans, just as the latter rank higher than animals and that no one can become a prophet just by striving for it" (quoted by Syed Sulaiman Nadvi in Seeratun Nabi - Vol IV). But none of the Prophets claimed for themselves a place equal to their creator or deviated from the Law (Sharia) revealed to them.

Unfortunately, a few of the Sufis were alleged to hold non-conformist beliefs contrary to the Sharia. On this account, Mansur Hallaj was executed in 922 AD at Baghdad under order of the State's Grand Vizier.

Yahya Bin Habash Suhrawardy was put to death at Aleppo under Saladin's order and Sarmad in India under the orders of Emperor Aurangzeb, both on complaint of the exoteric, or theological, orthodoxy.

These are, however, the only exceptions in an otherwise long list of Sufis who are revered even to this day for piety and peaceful proselytising work in that part of the world where Arab armies never set their feet after Islamizing and Arabizing the Middle Eastern and North African states in the 7th and 8th centuries of the Christian era.

Nor the Turko-Afghan Muslim conquerors established their sway as they did in South Asia. The astonishingly large numbers of Muslim converts in Eastern Africa (Nigeria, Somalia, Eritrea etc) and in South-East Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, North Borneo, South Philippines and South Thailand) prove how bloodless and peaceful was the penetration of Islam in these regions, thanks to the Sufis and exoteric preachers of the faith.

Even in the Indian subcontinent according to Dr. Tarachand ('Influence of Islam on Indian Culture'), during 10th and 11th centuries A.D., "numerous Muslim men of learning and religion poured into India and it is impossible to compile a list of all of them."

He names quite a few important ones like Ali Hajweri, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, Fariduddin Attar, Baba Farid, Qutubuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, Bahauddin Zakaria etc. He further acknowledges that "a host of others of less renown lived and laboured in India and, through their personal contact and influence, spread the ideas of Islamic philosophy and mysticism through the length and breadth of India."

Sharia, in today's context in the Islamic world, stands for those juristical and theological opinions of those exoteric and pious men of learning of the 8th and 9th centuries AD, who founded their respective schools of Fiqh (or juristic verdicts on theological issues).

The present day followers of Islam have to adhere to any one of these schools of Fiqh, a few by choice and mostly by accident of birth. Today, these juristic schools have been turned into feuding sects which is a lamentable fact and which was never intended to happen by the well-meaning, extremely pious and God-fearing founders of these theological schools.

Whereas the prescriptive part of the Faith prayers, fasting, alms-giving, pilgrimage and moral conduct can be observed by individual Muslims and even their communities living in any part of the world, Sharia laws can be implemented only where political power is wielded by the Muslims, and those in authority among them feel sincerely inclined to do so.

This approach to the observance of the theological code is distinct from 'suluk', literally the mystic path, although the professed goal of both is the same - pleasing the Almighty by obeying His commands as best as possible in the given circumstances generally and the individual capacity ('wusaa') in particular.

The former, exoteric or theological approach, represents the letter of the Faith to be enforced by the State's executive authority on all those who call themselves Muslims.

The latter, or mystic approach, induces those who are sincere believers of the Faith to conduct themselves according to the Sharia, not because of external compulsion but by inner promptings, irrespective of the fact whether the believers live in a state where sharia laws are operative or not.

Where the letter of Islam is not the law of the land, it is every believer's own responsibility to keep the spirit of Islam alive, as the Sufis of Naqshbandi order did in the erstwhile Soviet Republics of Central Asia where mosques were closed, practising religious rites and offering prayers in public prohibited, and the Holy Quran kept out of circulation.

The mystic assumption, which came true, was that atheistic indoctrination will only affect the mind, it cannot benumb or kill the soul which, according to the Quran, "proceeds from the command of the Creator" (17:87).

It is the human soul (Rooh Nafs according to mystics) which is accountable in the Hereafter for deeds during one's life on earths irrespective of the fact whether the state machinery was helpful or hostile in enabling an individual to lead a life of piety and abstinence from sin.

This is in accord with what the Quran implies when it says that it is ingrained in every soul as to what is right and what is wrong: "By the soul and Him who perfected it and inspired it with what is wrong for it and what is right for it" (91: 7-8).

If one cannot make society tread collectively on the right path despite striving for that, to the extent one can, then one has to adopt the right path for one's own self, as the Quran pronounces explicitly that it is every one's individual responsibility to do good deeds for reward in the next world: "Then every soul will know what it has made available for the Day of Judgment" (81: 14).

It is the soul, not discursive intellect, which is capable of perceiving the mystic experience that ennobles the man or woman concerned and elevates him or her to a higher plane where the Divine presence manifests itself and, in that state of blissful being, showers His infinite affection addressing, endearingly, in the words of the holy Book thus:

"O, thou Soul at peace!
Return Unto thy Creator!
Content in His good pleasure!
Enter thou among those who served Me!
Enter then My own Garden!" (89: 29-30).

Delhi talks not encouraging

Perhaps the only redeeming feature of the two-day talks in Delhi between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan which ended on Monday was what an Indian journalist called a complete absence of rancour. Rancour has more than once marked such bilateral talks in the past.

Overall, however, the talks remained largely inconclusive. No progress was reported on any of the eight items listed on the bilateral agenda. The lacklustre aspect of the talks has even been seen as suggesting that the India-Pakistan peace process has got stuck in a limbo.

A news report has claimed that the interlocutors at the very outset "shared inconsistencies and traded allegations over Jammu and Kashmir" that could put the very process of the peace in jeopardy. The Indian allegations were, of course, most strongly refuted by Pakistan foreign minister.

The Indian foreign minister claimed that India was committed to 'deepen and widen its engagement with Pakistan.' Mystifyingly he prefaced his remarks by saying that diplomacy provides hope, not salvation. This proved almost literally true as the talks progressed.

Even Mr Natwar Singh's claim of a modest progress in the form of his having developed a measure of rapport and mutual trust with his Pakistani counterpart sounded too much like a personal statement. He said this at the joint press conference. Mr Mahmud Kasuri nodded his approval.

It is reassuring that neither side is interpreting all this as a failure of the talks and both Mr Natwar Singh and Mr Kasuri have affirmed that the meetings and the peace dialogue process will be continued.

Curiously, the expected publication of the joint statement which is an established ritual of such bilateral diplomatic contacts did not take place immediately after the talks ended.

In the meantime foreign secretary Riaz Khokhar, who had earlier had a meeting with his Indian counterpart, left for home immediately after the second day of talks and in any case was not scheduled to stay on until the end of his minister's visit to New Delhi.

But does his prompt departure for Islamabad indicate that the joint ministerial statement would be finalized in Islamabad? There is no way to confirm such a conjecture.

However, it was evident from the statements of the two foreign ministers at their joint press conference that the two-day meeting could not achieve much that could be called substantial and that the two did not find it possible to signify an unqualified agreement on any of the items of their agenda. Most of their statements remained ambivalent. This is obviously disappointing.

Many of the items on the agenda were not too complex. For instance the date for the expected reopening of the Indian and Pakistani consulates in Karachi and Mumbai could have been announced, not only because there is already an agreement on it in principle but also because it would have met the hopes of the people on both sides of the border.

It would also have had a positive impact on the future of the peace process. The proposed easing of the visa procedures does not seem to be too complicated a matter.

A final decision about them would not need to await any further discussion and hopefully would not be postponed until the next foreign secretaries' meeting scheduled to be held in December.

The joint statement issued after the first day of the talks was typical of diplomatic brevity. It consisted of four short paragraphs and confined itself to polite generalities such as that the talks were held in "a friendly, cordial, affable and constructive atmosphere" and that the two countries would "explore ways and means of taking the (peace process) forward."

What else could the first high-level contact between the two countries, after a lapse of some three years and with a good deal of advance preparatory exchanges, be?

The exact purpose or significance of the meeting between Foreign Minister Mahmud Ali Kasuri and the Indian opposition leader, L.K. Advani, is difficult to guess. Mr Advani does not have a very pleasant image as far as Pakistan is concerned, nor is he exactly popular with a large section of the Indian people. The Indian Muslims associate him with the demolition of the Babri Masjid by Hindu militants and with the more recent Gujarat anti-Muslim riots.

Judging from the press reports, the foreign ministers' discussion of the Kashmir problem was largely sterile and only gave them the chance to reiterate their known positions.

At the very beginning of the talks India brought up the controversial issue. Expressing India's deep concern in the matter, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself in his statement focused on the issue, reportedly maintaining that "the very starting point of the composite dialogue process was based on the "genesis that Pakistani territory will not be allowed to be used for launching terrorist operations."

This could hardly be seen as an appropriate way to begin a dialogue on the subject and the Pakistan foreign office spokesman, Masood Khan, strongly refuted the allegation, implying that India was attempting to mystify the peace process. This could not but queer the pitch for a sensible exchange of views on the subject.

In the meeting with Indian foreign minister Pakistan reaffirmed its position on Kashmir and maintained that it would be difficult to sustain the peace process unless "India addresses it in the interest of the people of Kashmir."

The Indian external affairs spokesperson Navtej Sarna made the atmosphere murkier by asserting that what Pakistan was saying was not in "consonance with the spirit in which we have conducted the composite dialogue so far."

He added that Pakistan itself had been in favour of "a rhetoric restraint regime" for the dialogue. Mahmud Kasuri's response was fairly, conciliatory and he even declared that "good relations with India are in the interest of Pakistan."

Interventions by official spokespersons have become a part of the India-Pakistan bilateral contacts to discus their outstanding problems. Pakistani media persons could sense the heightening of tensions at Agra as some of the Indian spokespersons attempted to make frequent interventions while the discussions among the leaders were still in progress. This contributed in no small measure in the summit getting stymied without reaching a conclusive stage.

It would be unfortunate if at the very outset the Kashmir dispute becomes an insurmountable hurdle in the way of the composite dialogue and resolution of bilateral problems.

Both countries have allowed the Kashmir problem to become intractable and made it a point of honour. Thus, the foreign ministers' decision to continue with the ceasefire on the Line of Control (LoC), despite their differing perceptions of the Kashmir issue is encouraging. However, it is difficult to visualize at this stage how the mindset of the decision makers in India and Pakistan would undergo the necessary change.

India's National Security Adviser, J.N. Dixit, who will inevitably have to play a part in resolving the issue while discussing India-Pakistan problems has gone on record in his book on India-Pakistan relations to express the view that the Kashmir issue has a direct bearing on the prospects of peace and stability of the region and both India and Pakistan must realise the ground realities inherent in the situation. He went to say that India on its part should accept that the trouble in the state cannot all be attributed to Pakistan and India too must accept responsibility.

Dixit has then gone on to pose some important questions: Can India and Pakistan accept Jammu and Kashmir becoming an independent state? Can India maintain effective jurisdiction and control over Ladakh, Jammu and Punjab if India were to accept the valley and the Muslim majority areas in the state acceding to Pakistan? Will India be able to maintain its internal unity in demographic, ethnic and religious terms, if any of the currently circulating proposals about resolving the dispute is given serious consideration?

Being part of India's power elite Dixit would perhaps make sure that a way out is found and that the composite dialogue is not allowed to get obscured by a cacophony of rhetorics.

Fixation on foreign policy

Give some serious thought to what you are about to read and you will agree that I am not far off the mark. Pakistan, I maintain, is one of those unique places on earth where foreign policy and foreign relations have become fixated in the minds of the people.

Spend a few minutes in any drawing room in a Pakistani home and the conversation inevitably moves on to Pakistan's evolving relations with the United States, India, China, Afghanistan, Iran and the Muslim World in general - in that order.

The drawing rooms I speak of don't have to be in those incredibly posh areas of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. You don't have to consort with the high society that maintains fabulously appointed houses in Karachi's Defence Society, or Lahore's Defence Housing Authority or Islamabad's E-Sector to understand what concerns most Pakistanis the most.

How Pakistan will handle itself in the exceptionally turbulent world of the first few years of the 21st century is a subject of great interest to the ordinary shopkeeper; the ordinary taxi-driver; the porter in a hotel or at the airport; the people who bring in tea and samosas to the visitors to the drawing rooms. The masses are as occupied with foreign policy issues as are the elite and the literates.

Why this extraordinary fixation? I have been to private houses in other places in the world and I don't find the same kind of all-consuming interest in this one subject.

There are three answers to this question. Pakistan today is in the vortex of three perfect storms: the clash between radical Islam and the West (more accurately the United States); the rise of stateless groups, mostly Islamic today but could take any other form tomorrow or the day after; and the economic rise of two large Asian powers, China and India.

Steering out of one perfect storm is an arduous enough task in itself. Navigating through several would need both endurance and imagination that turns even great people into extraordinary heroes. Is the Pakistani leadership capable of making this transition?

What are the many developments that have produced these three perfect storms? The list is long but I should mention and briefly discuss four. The first of these, of course, was the Islamic revolution in Iran that brought the Shia Muslim clerics, led by the charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini, to power in Tehran. The speed with which the regime of Reza Shah Pahlavi crumbled caught by surprise even the more astute observers of Iranian politics.

A lesson should have been learned by the collapse of the Iranian monarchy: that a close alliance with the West does not necessarily ensure a regime's longevity. What had weakened Reza Shah in his country was his inability to deliver jobs and incomes to the millions of Iranian citizens who had watched with considerable envy the growing economic wealth and political influence of the few families who had access to the royal palace in Tehran.

It is unfortunate that the name of the Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington is now more or less permanently associated with his well known The Clash of Civilizations book.

Of much greater significance is his earlier work, Political Order in Changing Societies in which he analyzed why the countries with rapidly growing economies such as Iran in the 1970s also have a considerable amount of political discontent.

"Anamoie" was a word that had gained considerable currency in political science literature in the late 1960s and 1970s. It described the phenomenon of rising resentment against those who held power in the states that had presided over rapidly expanding economies.

Pakistan, under Ayub Khan, was one of them. Pakistan's first military president was brought down by a popular movement launched against him by the opposition at the end of what the president and his associates had described as the "decade of development."

The 1960s was, in many ways, one of the golden economic ages in Pakistan. But the glitter of that age didn't keep the masses pacified. They rebelled and contributed to the fall of Ayub Khan.

The same phenomenon was repeated in Iran in 1979, ten years after the collapse of the regime of Ayub Khan in Pakistan. However, the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran was an event of global significance, the impact of which is still being felt a quarter century later.

The second reason why even ordinary Pakistanis attach so much importance to foreign affairs was the decision taken by the military government of President Ziaul Haq to become actively involved in America's first war in Afghanistan.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 to ensure that it would have in place a government in Kabul sympathetic to its global ambitions. One of these was to protect the Soviet Union's southern flank, made up of half a dozen Muslim republics that could get sucked into the waves of change made by the Islamic revolution in Iran.

America's triumph in its first Afghan war in 1989 and Russia's ignominious defeat changed the world. The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan undermined the Lenin-Stalin model. Within two years, from 1989 to 1991, not only did the Soviet troops pull out of Afghanistan.

They also led to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, and the emergence of a dozen or so countries in East Europe and Asia as independent states that had once been part of the Soviet empire.

These were momentous events. Under President Ronald Regan, America was triumphant while in the Soviet Union power transferred from a semi-authoritarian Mikhail Gorbachev to a quasi-democratic Boris Yeltsin.

Having been a central player in this drama, Pakistan was largely ignored by America for a dozen years, from December 1989, when the last Soviet soldier walked out of Afghanistan, to September 2001 when nineteen young angry men, all Muslims, hijacked civilian airlines and rammed two of them into the World Trade Centre in New York and a third into the Pentagon, the seat of the US Department of Defence near Washington.

A fourth hijacked plane was brought down in the fields of Pennsylvania en route perhaps to the White House or to the Capitol, the house of the US Congress. Had the fourth plane also reached its target, the impact of "nine-eleven" (September 11, 2001) on world affairs would have been even greater.

The extraordinary bravery displayed by a group of passengers on the hijacked plane saved the world from turning more onto its axis than it did as a result of the total destruction of the World Trade Centre and the partial demolition of the Pentagon.

In the nearly twelve-year interregnum between December 1989 and September 2001, three developments occurred in and around Pakistan that also contributed to the production of the three perfect storms.

One of these, the third in our list of the contributing factors to the storms, was the way the Afghan mujahideen turned their attention to other "Islamic wars" around the globe, including the one in Kashmir.

The war in Kashmir began about the time that the Soviets were planning to pull out of Afghanistan. In the summer of 1989, India held an election in the part of Kashmir they have occupied since the UN mandated ceasefire of 1949.

Even the Indians are now prepared to admit that the 1989 elections were rigged to produce the results satisfactory to New Delhi. The Indian policymakers may have been satisfied but the ordinary Kashmiri was not. Some of them rose up in arms.

Whether this armed rebellion that cost some 40,000 lives in the fifteen year period between 1989 and 2004 would have endured without help from the mujahideen who infiltrated into the state from the Pakistan side of the border is a question that historians will debate for a long time to come.

Whether Pakistan was actively involved in promoting the rebellion in Kashmir to the extent believed by the Indians is another matter for the historians to settle. What is not in dispute is the fact that the battle over Kashmir nearly brought India and Pakistan into an open military engagement in 2002.

This engagement could have easily escalated into a nuclear exchange with devastating consequences. Such a confrontation may have happened had "nine-eleven" not occurred. The face-off between Islamabad and New Delhi was extremely distracting for Washington.

It used all the power at its disposal to persuade the two countries to pull back from a total confrontation. Washington succeeded, effectively laying the ground for the rapprochement between India and Pakistan that has brought about a dramatic change in the landscape in South Asia.

The Iranian revolution of 1979 and its aftermath in the Muslim world; the first American War in Afghanistan in 1979-89, and the conflict in Kashmir with an active involvement of the Pakistani jihadi groups were the first three of the six defining developments for Pakistan's foreign affairs.

These three are well understood and reasonably well analyzed. What is not appreciated with an equal amount of understanding is the collapse of the Pakistani state brought about by the quick withdrawal of America from the country. President Ziaul Haq's unexplained death in an air crash on August 17, 1988, brought a diluted form of democracy back to Pakistan.

As Fareed Zakaria has pointed out in a recent work on the evolution of democracy, not just in the developing world but also in the more developed parts of the globe, it takes a great amount of nurturing, patience and time to develop the democratic habit and introduce democracy into any political system.

President Zia's death lifted the constraints under which the political system was allowed to function. Left to its own devices, the system became inefficient, corrupt and essentially dysfunctional.

One of the most significant and, unfortunately, negative consequences of this development was the collapse of the public sector educational system. Into the void thus created stepped in the private sector at two opposite ends of the educational spectrum.

The private sector, working mostly for profit, was able to establish institutions that catered to the rich and the upper classes. The Islamic madressahs provided space within which the poorer segments of society could operate.

President Musharraf has correctly pointed out in the several speeches he has given on Islamic education that well run madressahs not only have a long history in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent.

They have also very successfully combined for centuries the Islamic tradition of social welfare, charity and education. But he realizes that that kind of madressahs is not the one that provides cannon fodder for the jihadi groups battling in various parts of the world, promoting various Islamic causes.

It is the other madressahs funded either by the conservative groups in the world of Islam, particularly in Saudi Arabia, that is graduating thousands of young men who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for what they have been taught as the cause of Islam.

Pakistan, unfortunately, and for the reasons discussed above, has become the epicentre of this madressah-centred movement. For obvious reasons, the western world is troubled by this development and would like Islamabad to get involved actively in reforming the madressah system. This has become a foreign policy issue that Islamabad will have to address one way or the other.