Muslim world in disarray

Back in the nineteenth century Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali wrote an invocation addressed to the Prophet (S.A.W). It began with the lines: "Ai khasa-i-khasan-i-rosul waqt-e-doa hai / Ummat pe teri waqt ajab aan para hai." (O noblest of the noble prophets this is the time to pray. Your Ummah is passing through strange times).

But his lamentation had a local orientation. It was based on the Muslims of India, who lay shattered and demoralized in the aftermath of the 1857 mutiny and the rigorous reprisals of the British army.

Iqbal covered a wider canvas. He took full account of the universal decline of Ummah and catalogued its causes in detail in his Jawab-i-shikwah. Yet, if there has been any change, it seems to have been for the worse.

More than half a century ago, Mohammad Asad (Leopold) Weiss, a Christian convert to Islam, wrote "Islam at the Crossroads." Today, the Ummah seems to have sunk deeper in the doldrums.

What is happening to it is the logical consequence of its own acts. It is a case of self-inflicted wounds. Ummah has been used in the Quran at various places to connote a people, community, nation, or brotherhood, according to the context.

It appears for the first time in 2:134 where it refers to Abraham's progeny, saying, "That was a 'people' that hath passed away." Here, it means "people." In 2:43 it says, "We made of you an Ummah justly balanced that ye might be witness over the nations."

Here, according to translators, the word could be interpreted both as having universal application for the entire Muslim community globally or narrowly in the literal sense to apply to the Arabs only to whom the Message was addressed. (q.v. Abdullah Yusuf Ali, the Holy Quran).

In 10-47 and 16:36 respectively, it is said, "To every Ummah (was sent) a Messenger" and, "We have sent among every Ummah, a Messenger." Here, too, the word carries the sense of "people, or community".

At two other places namely 21:92 and 23:52, scholars have adopted "brotherhood" as the only appropriate interpretation of the term. Says the Quran, "And if thy Lord had so willed He could surely have made mankind one Ummah (people).

Verily this Brotherhood of yours is a single Brotherhood." In Hujurat (49:10) all Muslims are described as brothers (Ikhwatun). "The Believers are a single Brotherhood (49:10).

Explaining the use of brotherhood to translate, Ummah, Yusuf Ali writes, "Community, race, nation, people, are words which import other ideas and do not quite correspond to Ummah.

'Religion' and 'Way of life' are derived meanings which could be used in other passages, but are less appropriate here." He takes note of the universal applicability of the Divine statement here to include "people of very different temperament and virtues, widely different in time, race, language, surroundings, history, and calling, yet forming the closest fraternity as being men and women united in the service of Allah. They pre-figure the final and perfect Brotherhood of Islam."

But, even a cursory look at what the Ummah did with those noble precepts would make the blood boil or the heart weep. The drift had set in as the Prophet had left this world.

The battles of Jamal and Siffeen, the assassination of Usman (R.A.) and Ali (R.A.) and the massacre of Karbala, one after the other, within just fifty years of his demise, demonstrate how the Ummah had profaned the Divine injunctions.

The irony becomes doubly tragic in light of the fact that the Quran repeatedly asserts that it was revealed in their, Arabic, language so it could be easier for them to comprehend.

Subsequently, conquests followed; empires, - Abbasids, Ummaiyads, Fatimids, Ottoman and, in India, Mughal - were built. Islam spread from Mauritania and Morocco on the tip of the Atlantic Ocean, to Indonesia in the Far East, taking parts of Europe, Central Asia and China, in its stride.

As people of other races converted to Islam, and "Ummah" translated, from "Arab people" to "Muslims of all colours and races", it could be justly expected that they would be bound together by the 'Rope of Allah' (habl illah), into a single bond of brotherhood.

They would stand together, shoulder to shoulder, in fair weather and foul, in weal and woe, like a solid cemented structure. "Bunyan um marsoos" (61:4) But that hope, alas, did not materialize. What happened was its opposite. The Ummah fragmented, with cracks appearing both vertically and horizontally.

Forgotten was the clarion call of the Quran which the Prophet (SAW) had repeated at his khutba, namely, "Verily the most honoured among you in the sight of Allah is he who is the most righteous of you." (49:13).

Ignored, likewise, was the admonition to "hold firmly to the "Rope" of Allah and "do not split." On the contrary, such bitterness took hold among sections of the Ummah against one another that even the Kaaba was not spared.

In 928 AD the Qaramtis raided Makkah, slaughtered the pilgrims, desecrated the Kaaba, looted even its covering and took away the Black Stone, which was returned after 20 years! But that is only one part of the story. The more tragic part of it is that after the twelfth century, the pursuit of knowledge also declined. During that glorious period of Muslim history, theologians and jurists had flourished side by side with others who made great strides in other disciplines, such as literature, medicine, science and philosophy.

But from the thirteenth century onwards, it appears that the Muslims retreated into a cocoon which kept every other branch of knowledge out of bounds, science being chosen for the worst opprobrium.

When Renaissance came to Europe, the Ummah was wallowing in utter darkness. There was none to study Francis Bacon and Hobbs and Descartes and answer them. The same Ummah that had thrown up renowned mathematicians and astronomers in the past was nowhere as Europe produced Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, et al and other inventors.

The downside reached a stage when in the early nineteenth century the Russian cannons were shattering the walls of the city of Bokhara, people were sitting in groups in mosques and madressahs and reciting "khatm-i-khwajgan." What happened thereafter is history.

Even today there is not much change in attitudes. The Ummah defies the Divine command. It remains divided. There are circles within circles. One of them is the Arab League, an exclusive club of the Arabic-speaking elite. And the Arab League is sub-divided into groups.

There are Muslim rulers who are literally swimming in a sea of gold, boasting a 2000-room palace where everything from bedsteads to telephones to bathtubs and even commode seats are covered in 24-karat gold plate, besides a throne of gold, gold-plated carriage and even umbrella. But nothing is ever heard of any contribution to encourage pursuit of learning, especially the sciences. No universities established, no scholarships to the promising children of the Ummah offered.

The Ummah is powerless. It does not produce any weapons. And yet, the mullah, jolted from his sleep has gone to the other unwise extreme to preach armed conflict with the enemy who is equipped with the latest technology. This is a sure recipe for suicide.

The fact is that the Ummah is defying Allah's admonitions, injunctions and commands. No amount of chest-beating or wild fulminations will avail. There is no way to recovery except following the Divine guidance.

Why is Dr Singh in power?

Last year Dr Manmohan Singh was fortunate. This year will determine whether he will be successful. All successful men require a degree of good fortune. But all fortunate men are not necessarily successful.

Fortune opens at least one door through which you can depart from the predictable trajectory of life and enter the realm of the memorable. Success comes when you can sustain the memorable.

Dr Manmohan Singh has used his first two hundred days in office to sustain his personal reputation. This is good news. He has not changed from the person we discovered when P.V. Narasimha Rao made him finance minister.

His central virtue remains integrity. The country has responded warmly and his stock has been rising at a very Manmohan pace steadily. He must of course be aware of inherent dangers.

The biggest is that of high expectations, for integrity is much more than financial honesty. It extends to intellectual and moral integrity. The disappointment therefore will be far higher if he is ever seen to succumb to the traditional political demands of obsequiousness or compromise beyond a common-sense level.

The common-sense level can be identified by an application of common sense. No one expects him to risk his government by measuring Laloo Yadav or Shibu Soren by the yardsticks of the Prophet Moses ("Thou shalt not steal" etc).

And yet, it will hurt his image, and do so soon, if he gives the impression of being impotent. He may not be the moral arbiter of past sins, but there must be no sin under his watch.

The question that Dr Singh will have to answer this year, and the sooner the better, is simple, basic and vital. Why is he in power? He may have come to power by accident but he cannot remain in power by accident. Power can be sustained only by a defined purpose. What is that purpose?

It cannot be yesterday's purpose. He cannot become prime minister in order to become better finance minister. The story of economic reforms is not over. Much remains to be done, and doubtless will be done in either micro or macro leaps, depending on opportunity, ability and the vagaries of coalition politics.

But the fact is that economic reform is yesterday's story, begun by Rao and given a bipartisan dimension by Atal Behari Vajpayee. Dr Manmohan Singh cannot be in power as a holding operation while the Congress rearranges its leadership options. That, apart from being the waste of opportunity, would reduce him to being in office rather than being in power.

The difference is obvious. Gulzarilal Nanda, Charan Singh, I.K. Gujral and Deve Gowda were in office. Each was removed, in a matter of days or months, before he could come to power. Others found their own route maps to legitimacy. Rajiv Gandhi inherited the office through a national tragedy.

He acquired credibility through a general election. A quirk of politics and the inflexibility of Morarji Desai made Indira Gandhi prime minister. Her road to credibility was perhaps the most difficult of all.

She took time to define her purpose, and when she did so had to fight exceptional battles within her own party, within parliament and then at the hustings. Vajpayee was merely in office until a paradoxical defeat on the floor of the Lok Sabha opened the door of victory in the general elections of 1999.

You can also begin by being in power and end up being in office, as Morarji Desai did between 1977 and 1979. This is the potential nightmare that Dr Singh must beware of.

If Dr Singh wants to lead India, rather than merely govern the country for whatever period God has placed in his destiny, then he must address the theme question: "Why am I prime minister?" He needs to formulate an answer with depth and sufficient length to stretch for five years. When he has formulated it, he needs to let us know what it is.

For in that answer will lie the hinge of his credibility. Power is a curious animal. It comes to life only when it has been injected with credibility. Power is not the ability to give orders, whether you are sergeant major or prime minister.

Any fool can give orders, and lots of fools do. Power is the ability to get those orders obeyed. That is why power is best sustained by wisdom and dissipates so easily with arrogance.

Dr Manmohan Singh can never be accused of arrogance. His modesty is one of his fundamental assets. But he might want to check out the humility levels of some of those who speak in his name.

Neither is power static. If it does not sweep forward like a tide, it ebbs. The pace in either direction is slow and often invisible when you are surrounded by the protective screens of office, making the obvious invisible. You can take it as a law: when there is no progress, there is definitely regress.

The forward momentum of power is propelled by the search of a new horizon. Which is the horizon towards which Dr Singh wants to take his country? What are the new realities that will be his legacy, his memorial, his raison d'etre for having been prime minister of India?

Dr Manmohan Singh is a good man, but being good is not good enough. Nor is it necessary to be a missionary in order to have a mission. As I noted, the laws of Moses can be left to the domain of Moses.

And yet every prime minister needs to define the Promised Land towards which he is leading his people. In an interesting departure from image, Dr Singh opened the new year with a significant political ploy. He was in Bengal, the fortress of his principal ally, the Marxists.

Bengal is the true power base of the Left, not Kerala, and the stakes in any election in Bengal cannot be higher for the Marxists. Using a remarkable blend, as delicate as the finest Darjeeling tea, in a tone not quite casual and not quite definitive, the prime minister invited Mamata Banerjee, the Left's greatest adversary, not only back into the Congress but also back into the Union Cabinet.

The second part of the perfectly nuanced offer was even more significant than the first, and gave the lie to those who believe that our economics-driven prime minister does not understand politics or political manoeuvre. It was a signal from a lighthouse that did a 360 degree turn, throwing beams in every direction.

Mamata Banerjee does not have MPs, so Dr Singh was not adding to his parliamentary score. His sharpest signal was aimed twelve months into the future, at the Bengal elections of early 2006.

It was an assertion that the Congress was not ready to live in the margins of Bengal in order to appease the Marxists. The party in Bengal, in other words, would not be hostage to the coalition in Delhi. This is a legitimate horizon.

The danger of coalition politics as it has emerged with the formation of the present government is that it threatens to reduce the Congress to a tattered and sporadic force in Indian politics, picking up seats where it can, rather than a cogent national party.

There are serious implications for India's polity if the Congress remains a marginal player, unable to consolidate or grow, for if the next general elections are held, as due, in 2009, the party could be further weakened by the lash of anti-incumbency.

That would mean that of the two national political formations, the Congress and the BJP, neither is expanding and both are conceding space to regional forces. Today the two coalitions have a centre around which they can circulate. If that centre weakens beyond a point, the nature of coalition politics will change.

When power fractures, will the polity hold? I don't know the answer, and maybe our constitutional structure has the strength to heal such concerns, but do not rule out the possibility of new temptations - perhaps in the office of the president of India, for starters. The seeds of the future are always sown in a complacent present.

As prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh must use power to chart a road map for his party. But that is only part of his mission. His substantive contribution has to be to create an agenda for every Indian. It cannot be a multipolar agenda that stinks of un achievability and is therefore dismissed as familiar political hypocrisy.

Dr Singh is still believed, because he is believed to be honest. He must not dilute that confidence by promising all things to all people, which of course ends up by meaning nothing to anyone.

What could be his core mission? I could of course name a few of the great unfinished tasks of the Indian nation state: the abolition of poverty and illiteracy, or the creation of peace with Pakistan, and there would be nothing new in them for we still have not had a prime minister who promised to increase poverty or to incite war with Pakistan (do not rule the second out, though, for hysteria has many lovers).

Such noble intentions as the creation of national wealth have been ill-served by lip service. If one expected the same from Dr Manmohan Singh, I would not have wasted time asking the core question.

It is not where we want to go that is the question, but how we will reach there, and how soon. The time has come for an answer. The answer can only come from the prime minister of India. As far as we are concerned: well, we also serve who only stand and wait.

The writer is editor-in-chief, Asian Age, New Delhi.

No justification for Iraq war

The White House's acknowledgement last month that the United States has formally ended its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq brought to a close the most calamitous international deception of modern times. This decision was taken a month after a contentious presidential election in which the issue of WMD and the war in Iraq played a central role.

In the lead-up to the invasion, and throughout its aftermath, President Bush was unwavering in his conviction that Iraq had WMD, and that this posed a threat to the US and the world.

The failure to find WMD should have been his Achilles heel, but the Democratic contender, John Kerry, floundered, changing his position on WMD and Iraq many times. Ironically, it was Kerry who forced the Bush administration to acknowledge that it was WMD that solely justified any military action against Iraq.

Before the US Senate in 2002, the then secretary of state, Colin Powell, responded to a question posed by Kerry about what would happen if Iraq allowed UN weapons inspectors to return and they found the country had in fact disarmed.

"If Iraq was disarmed as a result of an inspection regime that gave us and the Security Council confidence that it had been disarmed, I think it unlikely that we would find a casus belli."

When one looks at the situation in Iraq today, the only way that it would be possible to justify the current state of affairs - a once secular society now the centre of a global anti-American Islamist jihad, tens of thousands of civilians killed, an unending war that costs almost #3.2 billion a month, and the basic principles of democracy mocked through an election process that has generated extensive violence - is if the invasion of Iraq was for a cause worthy of the price.

The threat to international peace and security represented by Iraqi WMD seemed to be such a cause. We now know there were no WMD, and thus no justification for the war. And yet there are no repercussions.

The culpability for the war can be traced to those same Senate hearings in 2002, when Colin Powell said: "We can have debates about the size of the stockpile ... but no one can doubt two things. One, they (Iraq) are in violation of these resolutions ... And second, they have not lost the intent to develop these weapons of mass destruction."

Politicians, the mainstream media and the public alike accepted this line of argument, without debate, thus setting the stage for an illegal war. UN weapons inspections were never given a chance.

Ever since the Clinton administration ordered them out of Iraq in 1998, the US has denigrated the efficacy of the inspection process. This was a policy begun by Clinton, but perfected by Bush in the build-up to war.

In October 2002, a month after Saddam Hussein agreed to the unfettered return of weapons inspectors, the US defence department postulated the existence of secret production facilities, protected by a "concealment mechanism" designed to defeat inspectors. Thus, even if they returned, a finding of no WMD was meaningless.

Inspectors did return, and they found nothing. Iraq submitted a complete declaration of its WMD holdings, which was dismissed as lies by the Bush administration. Everyone seemed to accept this rejection of fact. "Intelligence information" was assumed to be infallible. And yet, it was all just hype.

There was never any serious effort undertaken by the Bush administration to find Iraqi WMD. Prior to the invasion, the US military re-designated an artillery brigade as an "exploitation task force" designed to search for WMD as the coalition advanced into Iraq.

It did little more than serve as a vehicle for its embedded reporter, Judith Miller of the New York Times, to recycle fabricated information provided by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, creating dramatic headlines that had no substance. Once Iraq was occupied, Miller was sent home, and the taskforce disbanded.

A new organization was created, the CIA-led Iraq survey group (ISG), led by David Kay. His job was not to find WMD but to spin the data for the political benefit of the White House.

He hinted at dramatic findings, only to suddenly reverse course once Saddam Hussein was captured. Kay told us that everyone had got it wrong on WMD, that it was no one's fault.

He was replaced by Charles Duelfer, whose task was to extend the WMD cover-up for as long as possible. Duelfer was very adept at this, having done similar work while serving as the deputy executive chairman of the UN weapons inspection effort.

I witnessed him manipulate reports to the Security Council, rejecting all that didn't sustain his (and the US government's) foregone conclusion that Iraq had WMD. As the head of the ISG, he was called upon to again manipulate the data.

As it was virtually impossible to conjure up WMD stockpiles where none existed, he did the next best thing - he re-certified Colin Powell's pre-war assertion that Saddam Hussein had the "intent" to reacquire WMD. Duelfer provided no evidence to support this supposition.

In fact, the available data seems to reject the notion of "intent". But once again, politicians, the mainstream media and the public at large failed to let facts get in the way of assertions.

The ISG had accomplished its mission - not the search for WMD, but the establishment of a viable alibi. Its job done, the ISG slipped quietly away, its passing barely noticed by politicians, media and a public all too willing to pretend that no crime has been committed.

But, through the invasion of Iraq, a crime of gigantic proportions has been perpetrated. If history has taught us anything, it is that it will condemn both the individuals and respective societies who not only perpetrated the crime, but also remained blind and mute while it was being committed.-Dawn/Guardian Service

The writer was a senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998.

Democracy on the wing

The images on al-Sharqiya, Iraq's most popular television channel, are slick and sophisticated; except for their language, they wouldn't be out of place in an American political campaign.

Amid pictures of flags, ballots and Iraqi children, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi promises "a bright future and a strong and competent Iraq." Among the freedoms Iraqis - Sunnis, Shias and Kurds alike - have embraced since Saddam Hussein's ouster is access to satellite television.

Most Iraqis are news junkies, rapidly channel-surfing to catch the latest headlines. As I watched television with a Kurdish friend, Allawi ads ran repeatedly on Iraqi channels and on al-Arabiya, an Arabic satellite channel broadcast out of Dubai.

Allawi's political spots do not matter much in Najaf, where bloody urban warfare was waged just five months ago. The reason is not lack of interest but rather lack of electricity.

Because of insurgent activity, the Iraqi government has been unable to supply fuel to the Musayyib power station, contributing to frequent power cuts. Ordinary Iraqis have to wait up to two days to purchase gasoline for their generators. They cannot afford to power their television sets.

Shia politicians have accordingly taken different campaign tacks. Because insurgent violence limits the number of rallies possible, many broadcast their messages by radio, accessible to ordinary Iraqis with battery-powered sets. While Allawi is constrained by a wall of security, his Shia competitors have adopted a grass-roots campaign.

On Jan. 9, tribal sheiks from the outskirts of Najaf hosted a rally in the town of Mushkhab. Among those attending was Abdul Karim Muhammadawi, known as the "Robin Hood of the Marshes" for his resistance to Saddam Hussein's army before the American invasion. Former Governing Council members Ahmed Barak and Ahmed Chalabi also were there; Chalabi drove down from Baghdad for the event.

Washington pundits who argue about whether the Sunnis will boycott the election missed an effusive greeting for Mudhar Shawkat and Sheik Fawaz Jarba, two Arab Sunnis who are running on the Shia-dominated Iraqi National Alliance list, which has been endorsed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

I embedded myself with Iraqi friends in Baghdad's Mansour district, a diverse area that is home to many politicians but that has recently been the site of a number of bombings.

After sunset, the generators go on and reception rooms are abuzz with local notables. In back rooms, politicians from across Iraq make deals and exchange gossip. They debate the efficacy of Gen. David H. Petraeus's training program for the new Iraqi military and how security might be improved. They discuss coalitions and post-election portfolios.

The latest rumors involve speculation that the Shias might offer the presidency to the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Jalal Talabani. Shias and Sunnis discuss strategies to curb violence in Mosul.

Some politicians disappear to consult with figures such as Iraq's interim president, Ghazi Yawar, a Sunni tribal leader from Mosul who is heading his own slate of candidates. -Dawn/Washington Post Service

The writer is editor of the Middle East Quarterly.