Globalization:  Muslim Must Face Challenges

The blinkers of sectarianism need be removed within the Muslim Ummah so that we can study our past in an objective way and view our challenges from our own perspective, says Shaykh Ramadan Ahmed

With a cursory glance at the scale of change taking place in the world today, it seems that Muslims in many parts of the world are likely to be left out. Perceptions of life, universal human values, and the criterion for good and evil are no more the same as those known to previous generations. The magnitude of change is so huge and swift, leaving some Muslim scholars bewildered and unable to comprehend what’s going on. Some are drowned by the strong wave of modernism, while others are groping for a land of equilibrium where Islam can benefit from globalization without being caught up in its flames.

The reason behind this state of affairs is that Islam had ceased to exist as a way of life a few centuries before the collapse of  the Islamic Caliphate in Turkey in 1924. Two events happened simultaneously: on the one hand the virus of Westernization swept through the Muslim world, carried by colonialism, eliminating the remnants of the ailing Islamic civilization. Extremely bedazzled by Western style of life, the new Muslim generations gluttonously grabbed everything that came from the West, be it culture or way of thinking. It is these Western-minded Muslim elites who introduced nationalism and secular laws in the Muslim world for the first time. The pioneers of this trend were Rifaa  At-Tahtawi, who introduced the Western education system in Egypt, and Kamal Ataturk who replaced Islam with nationalism and fought Islam relentlessly in all aspects of life in Turkey, to name but a few.

Having closed the door of ijtihad (depicting rules from their sources and applying them to day-to-day affairs) Muslim scholars, on the other hand,  failed to assimilate the new changes into Islamic jurisprudence. Instead, they took a very antagonistic stance towards everything that was Western. For instance, the introduction of telephone in Saudi Arabia took long to be given a go-ahead by the religious institution. The same is true of the introduction of TV, the internet, etc.

One of the major results of this ideological debacle of weakness in dealing with the new challenges was that the new generation of Western cultured Muslims climbed the helm of power and managed to empty the national education systems from any religious content. Muslim scholars responded by establishing their own religious institutions whose graduates were always marginalized and looked down upon by the state. State education policies chained Islamic institutions to the extent that their affiliates were viewed with scorn and ridicule. Through the course of time and excessive marginalization, Islamic institutions became less and less contributive to the common good. Instead, they plunged themselves into sectarianism and differences over trivial issues. We reached a stage where the followers of the four schools of thought would regard one another as belonging to totally different religions, ignorant of the fact that the founders of these schools learned from one another.

This state of affairs gave birth to a number of Islamic reformist movements which gradually developed their own tools of facing the challenge, governed by their context. In the Indian subcontinent two movements emerged, viz the Tabligh Jama’ah and Jama’ah Islamia. Tabligh Jama’ah Jamaat, established by Maulana Mohammed  Elias (1886-1944) based its strategy on bringing back to the fold of Islam those Muslims who have gone astray. Since Tabligh Jama’ah was not a political movement and due to the fact that its message was internally directed, it was not in any way regarded by colonial powers as being a potential threat. Jama’ah Islamia, established by Imam Abul Aala Al Maudoodi (1850-1903), based its strategy on changing the system of governance as a way of returning Islam to power. Politics is, thus, the focus of Jama’ah Islamia.

In Egypt emerged Ikhwanul Muslimeen, led by Imam Hasan Al Banna (1906-1949). Its strategy was similar to that of Jama’ah Islamia, albeit influenced by local political climate. Ikhwanul Muslimeen as an ideology, survived the axe of a brutal pro-Western regime in Egypt during the first half of the 20th century. Many political Islamic movements in the world today owe much to Ikhwanul Muslimeen, in spite of the fact that these movements defected from the mainstream movement and developed their own perceptions and strategies. These defected groups regarded the approach adopted by Ikhwan as being too soft, given the suppression the movement underwent. The most recent among them are the Jihad Movement, led today by Ayman Al Zawahiry, Taqfeer Wal Hijrah, and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaida.  (Al Qaida and Jihad merged under the political leadership of bin Laden but ideologically influenced by Zawahiri). These groups have adopted violent means for achieving their goals, owing to the circumstances surrounding their split up from the mainstream movement.

Other movements which had emerged before colonialism, like the Salafi movement, started by Shaykh. Mohamed Ibn Abdul Wahab, were concerned with fighting “Sufist innovations” (Bid’ah). It collaborated with the Saudi dynasty to establish the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and managed to get rid of all the mazaars built in the Arab Peninsula.   

Despite the fact that most of these movements appeared to face almost the same challenge - grappling with the aftermath of colonialism - each of them confined itself to its own scope of thinking, unprepared to accommodate the other. In fact, some of them adopted a very systematic policy of eliminating the other, in the process turning a blind eye to the main challenges facing the Ummah.

As time passes new challenges occur while old challenges either diminish or take new dimensions. The Ummah today is walking the tight rope between the need to assimilate the positive aspects of Western civilization into Islam, on the one hand, and the need to maintain the Muslim identity against the evils of globalization, on the other. It is, thus, incumbent upon Muslim scholars and Islamic institutions to encourage the study of contemporary efforts exerted by reformist individuals or institutions. The blinkers of sectarianism need be taken off and an objective study of our past needs to be conducted in a way that enables us to view our challenges from our own perspective.

Shaykh Ramadan Ahmed is a graduate of the International Islamic University in Sudan.  He presently serves as director of the Verulam Islamic Institute.

Article by Shaykh Ramadan Ahmed