THE first and foremost task for Islamic image builders should be to take stock of the many sensitive issues involved in evolving an integrated image of the ummah as an organic whole. Neighbours as close and as far apart as Iran and Saudi Arabia politically and denominationally pose problems too formidable to be resolved with ease.

There are at least two landmark cases to illustrate the divergent and mutually exclusive perceptions of the two neighbours.

By some coincidence, uncanny or designed, CNN on Dec 6 telecast a good three to four-minute footage showing President Mahmood Ahmadinejad promising his people the return of Imam Mehdi to the world. His listeners heard their leader with deep devotion.

That was just about the time when President Ahmadinejad had arrived in Jeddah on his first official visit abroad since his assumption of the presidency.

Exactly 26 years ago at the turn of the Islamic calendar from the 14th to 15th century on November 19, 1979 (1 Muharramul Haram 1400 AH), some 200 young men proclaiming the advent of Imam Mehdi laid siege to the Khana-i-Kaaba and locked themselves inside its holy precincts.

Saudi forces rushed to the spot but failed to throw out the occupiers. The Saudi authorities then approached the French government for help. In response, the French government rushed a detachment of its Special Forces to deal with the contingency. Violent gun-battles followed before the French forces were able to overpower the young fanatics and put an end to the siege of the Kaaba.

The question is how to bridge the gulf between such mutually irreconcilable visions of the one and same issue. The return of Imam Mehdi and numerous other matters like that, even if of little concern to the ummah’s main body could still be articles of faith with two or more countries.

Whereas the Saudis had to request a Christian European country for military aid to dislodge its own deviants proclaiming the coming of Imam Mehdi, in Iran the elected head of state himself gives his people the tidings of the coming of Imam Mehdi as the universal redeemer.

The only element of doubt could arise from the slanted rendition into English of President Ahmadinejad’s lines delivered in his native Persian.

The benefit of the doubt must, in that case, go to the Iranian president.

One of the major tasks the OIC summit set for itself was to project the true and untarnished (pre-9/11) image of Islam. President Musharraf has time and again spoken of a ‘soft’ image of Islam in the context of his strategy of ‘enlightened moderation’.

In a strongly-worded statement at the OIC foreign ministers’ conference, however, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal exhorted his Islamic peers to “counter the harsh offensive from the enemies of Islam abroad and some of its own children with deviant ideologies...”. At the same time, he hastened to stress the need for presenting the “correct image of Islam” by “defending” its principles with “dialogue and wisdom”. Even if reported out of context, the two parts of the statement nevertheless make contradictory reading.

The plain truth is that obsession with the existence of the enemies of Islam abroad and at home leaves little scope for “principles of dialogue and wisdom”. The vision of the enemy staring one in the face is plainly inconsistent with sobre reflection and cool-headed planning for enduring peace.

What needs to be realized by each one of the Islamic fraternity (extravagantly projected as the ummah) is that image cannot be a substitute for truth.

Truth must come to the fore sooner or later, no matter how well concealed behind the curtain of beguiling rhetoric and professional PR.

To say and believe that all is well with us and that our ‘enemies’ alone are to blame for our plight is simply to pass the buck. Such an essentially negative attitude can only help to make us commit the same mistakes time and again.

More than serving the cause of Islam our leaders and power brokers would rather use it as a political instrument to keep their personal hold on power. What have they done to project Islam (as opposed to its image) as a positive, earthly reality and a divinely-ordained system to serve mankind as a whole? Must we be always looking for an ‘enemy’ to find a rationale for an Islamic order? Isn’t the enemy within rather than without?

Furthermore, it is one thing to be spending billion of dollars on building grand mosques and printing gold-lettered copies of the Holy Quran but quite another to raise universities to conduct serious, scientific research into the Quranic message and teachings.

Our electronic media are used mostly (in fact overwhelmingly) for sentimental sermonizing, ‘naat khawani’, and rhetorical discussion instead of multi-dimensional debate and argument.

In Pakistan, the presenter of a popular TV channel discusses things as ridiculous as the status of an egg being ‘halal’ or ‘haram’ and such personal questions as divorce and marriage. All through the month of Ramazan, the bulk of air time was consumed by such inane discussions. Isn’t that little more than trivializing Islam?

Many billboards and electric poles all along Karachi’s main highway, the Sharae Faisal, are painted with ‘Isma-i-Hasna’, the 99 sacred names of Allah. What kind of a message will this give to a foreigner?

The Makkah Declaration laid most stress on “combating terrorism and extremism” in keeping with the moderate nature of Islam. Is that what the Islamic ummah is all about and good for? To participate in the US-led war on ‘murderous Islamic extremism’, in the words of President George Bush?

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.