If This be Treason, then Make the Most of It

Controlling power by authoritarian regimes from by-passing or amending the constitutions in order to get political advantages to crossing the limits enforced by parliaments and judiciary systems have almost become a predicament in most countries of the Third World, especially, the Middle Eastern and South-East Asian countries, with a limpid exception of India.

The sense of Democracy in those countries has been used as a movement for change, rather than building up strong, sustainable and free social, political, and constitutional institutions with independent judiciary and system of checks and balances.

Political elites and intellectuals who had rejected the ideas of Liberal Democracies in the early Twentieth-century, have once again seemed to realize the urgency for the change. Their disenchantment can be seen by their speeches, writings and commentaries pushing for the reforms.
But their efforts to push for a democratic change have not yet been transubstantiated into the mass-constituencies, which are considered to be the most important factor and back-bone, for building up genuine liberal democracies.

For political elites, one of the problems is their inability to reach out to the general public in a way that can motivate them enough to launch any rational and organized movements, in societies dominated by old ideas from Nationalism to Anti-Colonialism and from religious fundamentalism to the Pan-Arab Nationalism. Still, in many of the countries, most people see Colonialism as a core reason and cause, which has impeded the transition to free, democratic and modern societies in the Muslim world. The rhetoric perpetrated by people like Mr. Touqir Hussain, a retired Pakistani Ambassador, that none of the Islamic countries have hardly escaped from the long period of Colonialism is not new.

Many of the world’s leading influential figures like Walter Rodney and Edward Said seemed to have repeated the same arguments made by the Intellectuals of the Third World like chinviezu and Frantz Fanon, one of the most influential theorists, who later joined the Algerian Nationalist Movement.

In his famous book, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon, however, accepted the Universal reality by noticing that, “Decolonization unifies that people by the radical decision to remove from it its heterogeneity and by unifying it on a national, sometimes a racial basis”.

The problem is not that simple in terms of cause and effect, as mentioned by Frantz Fanon, that the opulence of Europeans has been founded on slavery and their well being and progress have been built up with the sweat and dead bodies of Arabs, Negroes, Indians and Yellow-races. Today, the problems faced by Arab and Muslim countries are more complex in nature.

Still, those who accuse Western Colonialism of the cause for the backwardness and inability of the Muslim countries to embrace Democracy, should go back into the history and find out the facts for themselves, in order to set the record straight. Because, as Aldous Huxley, once said that, “the facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

History attests the validity of many invasions made by different powerful Empires on each other, and, Islamic World is no exception to that. For instance, during the 7th-centuray Mecca was midway between the world’s most powerful civilizations, ideologies, philosophies and civil societies. The world most sophisticated and modern weapons were in possession of either the Byzantines or the Persians. For over Eleven hundred years (550 BC to 622 CE), the Persians and Romans controlled the World and fought one another. Then came along the Islamic Empire that not only defeated the Byzantines in the West, but also, the Persians in the East, thus, under the leadership of “Amr-Ibn-As” they were able to attack the fortress of Babylon, which was the World’s greatest military Castle, controlled by the Byzantines.

At this time and moment, one must not forget the World’s other great Empires and Dynasties, such as, the Macedonian Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Chinese Empire, Achaemenid Dynasty (In which thousand of young Persian troops were sent to Greece to destroy Athens and for which Max Weber, once said that, “the Army is a collection of individuals who fight with each other but do not know each other for the sake of those who know each other but do not fight each other), the Aztec/ Inca Empires in America and the Ottoman Empire. History is filled with examples of these World’s powerful Empires. Remember, Afshar Dynasty (the founder, Nadir Shah, had sent thousand of Persians troops to conquer India and dethrone Muhammad Shah, the Mogul emperor).

India, the world largest democracy in the third world, had been invaded and conquered by the Persians, the Turks, the Afghans, Alexander the Great and the Arabs before it was invaded and conquered by the British. If India can emerge as a democracy, then why can’t other countries of the Middle East and South East Asia? The population of Muslims in India is more than the population of Muslims in Pakistan. One may ask, is that Democracy incompatible with Islam? The answer to that would, of course, be certainly not. Islam and Democracy can exist together.

The problem with the lack of popular constituencies in the Muslim World is not an Islamic matter. Therefore, it should not be dealt in that perspective. The fact of the matter is that, today, the Muslim World is stuck between despotic regimes and intolerant societies.

By 1964, most of the territories had been replaced by independent countries. In 1946, the Philippines, the former United States colony became free. In 1947, Great Britain divided its former colony India, between the Hindu majority India and the Muslim majority Pakistan. The Dutch let go of the former East Indies, which in 1950 became Indonesia. France was driven out of its former colony Indochina in 1954, which became North and South Vietnam. Similarly, Middle East became free after France and Britain, who had dominated them since 1919, were driven out. Even in Africa, nearly all colonies became free with Algeria in 1960, in which France waged a bloody war against the Algerians.

Between 1940 and 1950, there was much hope that these countries would regain their past potential. It seems, however, strange now. Some thing went wrong between now and then. It had nothing to do with the Western Colonialism and Imperialism for that matter. It had more to do with the despotic and intolerant regimes, which could not produce liberal democracies in those countries.

After having freed from the Western Colonialists, the vacuum was quickly filled with dictators, extremism and religious violence. Name any country, with a little exception of Turkey (the fifth largest Muslim population in the World, a flawed but functioning democracy), Bangladesh (a functioning democracy) and Malaysia (where religious parties are equally allowed to compete openly with other political parties, thus, kept the radicalism under-control), almost all other Muslims and Asian countries have had been under the influence of dictators and kings, who control the absolute power. Thus, became the root-cause of Islamic fundamentalism, which has engulfed the Middle Eastern as well as the South-East Asian countries.

Egypt, has a crucial role in the history, which gave birth to the, what we know now, Islamic Fundamentalism. The ideas like Nationalism started to shuffle into the Arab land during the period of 1920 to 1952, when Wafd, a Group that enjoyed enormous support of the Arabs right after Egypt’s Independence. But later on, their popularity started to decline with the incline of Gamel Abdel Nasser, especially, after the Officers’ coup in 1952. Nasser, the then considered, “The Lion of Egypt”, had used profound language, which influenced the majority of Arabs. His main rhetoric Nationalism, Socialism and Modernization later on, became the rhetoric of the generals from Syria in the Middle East to the Indonesia and to the dictators in Pakistan in the South-East Asia, who consider themselves as the only savior of the people.

But the actual blow to Nassersim and boost to Islamic Fundamentalism came from the Sayyid Qutub an Egyptian (who translated many of the books written by a Pakistani cleric and scholar Abul Ala Maududi). Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s use of audiocassettes gave new momentum, to the kind of radicalism, which has gotten worse than ever before? In short, from closed societies to the lack of judicial system and from lack of democratic institutions to the absolute powerful dictators are the actual reasons that impede the concept of constitutional liberalism and Democracy to flourish.

On the other hand, America once used to be the colony of the Great Britain has achieved almost every thing through its true passion and desire by adopting Capitalism, Democracy and Constitutional Liberalism, under the leadership of John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson and for which Napoleon Hill once said that, “remember the date September 5th, 1774, which is more important than July 4th, 1776. If there had been no decision to hold the continental Congress, there could have been no signing of the Declaration of Independence”.

In the end, to those who still blame Colonialism for the backwardness and inability of the Muslim countries, let me speak the same classical line once spoken by Patrick Henry(one of Jefferson’s colleague) that, “If this be treason, then make the most of it”.